


Six Degrees of Supernatural Separation

by ebjameston



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - College/University, BAMF Stiles, F/M, Gen, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Professor Derek Hale, Slow Build Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Teen Wolf AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-30
Updated: 2014-10-23
Packaged: 2018-01-17 13:07:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 51,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1388788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ebjameston/pseuds/ebjameston
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All Derek Hale wants is to figure out how in the hell to be a professor and forget about the destroyed pack he left behind. He's not looking for a new pack, he's not even looking for friends; he just wants to keep his head down and live a supernatural-free life. 3000 miles away from everything and everyone he knows, this shouldn't be hard - right?  Right.</p><p>Stiles Stilinski walking into his life and announcing that the McCall pack's banshee has marked Derek for death could, however, complicate things.</p><p>(Canon-minus-Derek-Hale compliant thru 3A. Kind of.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

Derek Hale’s first day of being a professor goes pretty well, all things considered.  Some of the kids in his Shakespearian Lit class actually seem to have their brains turned on, the students in his Technical Writing course are snarky and clever, and half of his English Comp 102 class is just a little bit terrified of him.

Really, it couldn’t have gone any better.

He might be humming to himself just a little as he crosses the quad at the end of the day. He’ll grab some dinner on the way back to the spacious loft apartment he’s still settling into, have a beer or two while making sure he’s prepped for all of tomorrow’s classes, and get to bed early enough that waking up for his normal 5AM run won’t seem like torture.

His life here at Greymar University is simple. Uncomplicated. Normal.

 _You should call home_ , says a nagging little voice in the back of his mind.

 _Yeah, no,_ he thinks.

_Just to check in. The full moon’s less than a week away and you haven’t talked to them since the move._

Derek shuts that train of thought down hard. No. He hasn’t talked to them, and he’s not going to talk to them. It’s over. It’s done. He didn’t move 3000 miles across the damn country to be haunted by the ghosts of his former pack.

This is precisely why the faint scent of _werewolf_ drifting across the quad slams into him so hard that he literally stops walking, causing a group of cross country runners to awkwardly skitter around him.  He’s torn between _fight_ and _panic_ and _what the hell_? and turns all of his senses on high, zooming in on a tall brown-haired kid on the other side of the lawn. He’s got a messenger bag slung across his chest, a cell phone pressed to one ear, and is wearing an oversized hoodie that he’s cuffed back twice but still can’t keep from falling over his hands.

“I’m the TA, Scott, of course I stayed after class, the little jerkbutts had a zillion questions,” he’s saying into his phone. “Look, will you just ask Isaac to vote on pizza or Thai? I know I said I’d cook, but I want to get ahead on my reading for tomorrow.”

Derek finds himself following the guy, keeping far enough back that humans won’t be able to tell unless they’re paying very close attention. He and the person on the other end of the phone reach an agreement about pizza and he hangs up, and then Derek’s just tracking him by his heartbeat and the complex mix of scents trailing him. _Werewolf_ is rolling off that ridiculously large sweatshirt, but the pervasive notes underneath it are fresh-cut grass, coffee beans, a hint of bonfire, slightly acidic medication, and – above all – _human_.

Derek tails him all the way to the parking lot north of campus, watches him climb into an old, light blue Jeep that looks like it’s been to hell and back. For a brief, insane moment, Derek considers confronting him – whether to yell at him because how _dare_ he bring this supernatural _crap_ back into his life or to say _Hi, I’m Derek, what’s your name?_ he hasn’t decided – but he ends up just staring after his taillights, long after they’ve faded into the gathering dusk.

 _Maybe he borrowed it from someone_ , he rationalizes as he begins what’ll be a 25-minute walk to his own car, in the faculty lot on the south side. _A friend from back home. Or maybe it’s his roommate’s boyfriend’s from back home. His roommate’s sister’s boyfriend’s brother’s uncle’s, who now lives in Russia._

Because playing Six Degrees of Separation with the Supernatural has always worked out _so_ well for him in the past.

 

* * *

  

Derek doesn’t see the kid again for awhile, and he actually allows himself to think that it was a fluke. Maybe – just maybe – the kid really had just borrowed the sweatshirt from someone else. So Derek focuses on surviving his first two weeks of professorship, and it’s honestly not that bad – he actually likes some of his students, his colleagues are friendly and welcoming, and it turns out that the Pacific Northwest is pretty great place to be a werewolf. There’s a huge forest bordering the ocean out west of campus and he spent the night of the full moon just _running._ Based on some preliminary topographical research (mainly courtesy of Google Earth), it looks like this whole region is densely wooded enough that he could feasibly run from Greymar’s campus – 50-ish miles south of Portland – to Seattle to Denver and back, without ever crossing into civilization. He’d have to clear it with all the local packs, of course, and he’d have to be incredibly fucking bored to give it a whirl but the fact that he could if he wanted to is pretty damn freeing. His days are full of intellectual chatter with people that, for the most part, don’t entirely make him want to jump out of his skin, and after classes he retreats to his apartment to bask in the still-foreign glory that is actually being _alone_ and having some privacy.

And if the quiet is sometimes just a little too quiet, well, this is what he signed up for.

Then he rounds the corner on the library and literally mows the kid over, sending all of his books and Derek’s stack of his Comp 102 class’s first offerings to the ground.

“Crappity crapping crap!” The guy exclaims, rubbing his forehead from where it careened into Derek’s shoulder. “Are you okay? I’m so sorry, I totally wasn’t looking where I was going, completely my fault, are you okay? This is so like me, you know, you’re, like, the tenth person I’ve run into today – sorry, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Derek says when the human stops to breathe. He stoops to help collect the other’s books – everything from Norse mythology to Germanic languages to Differential Equations. “Are you?”

“Me? Oh yeah, I’m good, I’m great, totally okay. Like I said, I’ve been bouncing off people all day.”

He continues to babble about nothing, giving Derek plenty of time to reassess his scent – grass and coffee and fire and acid, and irretrievably human. The werewolf scent is still there, but he can almost place the familiarity now. The Hale pack was never overly involved with humans, but some of the packs they were friendly with would show up at the Summer Solstice festival with a human or two in tow, and Derek remembers at least two mated humans in the Donovan pack. This kid isn’t mated to a werewolf – that’s an entirely different scent – but he’s around them a lot. Lives with them, maybe, or is actually one of a pack’s humans.

Derek is royally screwed.

“What are you doing at the library at 2AM on a Saturday?” He asks, interrupting the guy’s tenth apology. A large portion of his brain wants him to just grab his stuff and get the hell away from he-who-runs-with-wolves, but he’s so morbidly curious about this boy that he can’t stop the traitorous question from escaping.

The human unfolds himself from the ground one limb at a time, all elbows and knees. “Reading. You see, this is a library, and it contains a bunch of these things called _books_.”

Derek just barely contains his eye roll. “Anything interesting?”

The boy’s heartrate picks up. “Oh. Uh, well, it’s mostly just stuff for class…wait, aren’t you Professor Hale?”

He blinks. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“Oh, cool – I tried to get in to your Shakespearian Lit class, but the roster was full. Are you teaching it again next semester?”

He blinks again. Whatever he was expecting out of this encounter, it wasn’t a discussion of his teaching schedule. “No, probably not until fall of next year.”

The boy’s face falls, almost comically. “Ah, okay. Bummer. Well – nice to meet you!”

He takes off toward the north parking lot again, and Derek is once again torn between wanting to follow and wanting to fling himself off a cliff for even considering it.  And being really, really confused because that boy – no matter what else he might be and whatever ties to hellhounds or pixies or mermaids he may have – is just plain _weird_ and disarming.

He settles for calling his little sister when he gets back to his apartment.

“Derek!” Cora answers, surprise clear in her voice. “I didn’t think you’d call.”

“I wasn’t really planning on it,” he admits, putting the phone on speaker and leaving it on the kitchen counter. “I miss you, kiddo, but I just…”

“I know,” Cora says quietly. “I’d leave too, if I could.”

“Just a few more years,” he calls, stripping off his tie and kicking his shoes into a corner. He still feels guilty for leaving Cora behind, but his appeal to become her legal guardian in the wake of their parents’ death was denied. And if he’d stayed, he would have ended up doing something stupid and reckless and violent out of misplaced rage and guilt.

Something _else_ stupid and reckless and violent.

“You can come out to Greymar for school. Or Oregon, or UW.”

She doesn’t respond immediately, then says, “Full moon was weird without you. With it just being me and Uncle Peter.”

He swings back to the counter and scoops up the phone. “I can imagine. It was okay, though?”

She sighs, and he imagines her flopping back onto the rug in her bedroom in the pack house back in Maine. The way she used to, before that house burned down. “Okay, I guess. Uncle Peter found a pack upstate and he’s been thinking about talking to them.”

“This soon?” Peter talking to another pack can only mean that he’s thinking about negotiating a merge. Derek grabs the stack of ungraded essays and drops them by the side of his bed. “It’s only been…”

“It’s been over three years.” Cora says. “It’s been over three years since the fire, and we’re small and weak in a pack this little, especially since you left. Plus he says he’s worried about me not socializing with wolves my own age.”

“So you’d want him to do it?”

“I dunno. What do you think?”

Derek sprawls across his bed. “It doesn’t really matter what I think. I’m not your Alpha-to-be anymore, Cora – I’m not even pack anymore.”

“You could change that. You could just come back. Come _home_ , Derek.”

“It’s not my home anymore, kid,” he says, as gently as he can. “Take care of yourself, okay?” He hangs up before she can respond and plugs the phone in to charge overnight, studiously not thinking about his family as he forces himself into a restless sleep.

 

* * *

 

The third time he sees the boy, it’s at a coffee shop across the street from his apartment building and he spots him through the window as he returns from a long, lazy Sunday morning run. The kid’s got books, notebooks, and a laptop spread out across a table and a deep furrow between his eyebrows, and Derek makes a split-second decision to walk in and talk to him again.

He orders a coffee and a scone, watching him out of the corner of his eye as he waits for his order to be up. The guy never seems to be still – always drumming the end of a pencil against the table, tapping out a rhythm against the edge of his laptop shifting to a different chair to study a new set of notes.

“Who exactly are you?” Derek says without introduction when he receives his scone, taking the empty seat across the table. 

The boy crinkles his nose, but doesn’t look up from his laptop. “'Hello' to you too, buddy.”

Derek shrugs, carefully keeping his face passive. “I saw you on the first day of class. Then again two weeks later, when I ran into you leaving the library at 2am.  Today you appear at the coffee shop across from my apartment, but I still don’t even know your name. Asking you who are seems like a logical question.”

The boy squints up at him, and Derek is momentarily startled by the depth in the light brown eyes. “You do realize that recounting every time you’ve seen me is a little creepy. And makes you sound like a stalky stalker who stalks.”

He shrugs again and takes a sip of his coffee. “You’re the one within spitting distance of where I live.”

“Fine,” he sighs. “But only because I need a break from geomapping the land from here to Canada. I’m Stiles. I’m a junior here at Greymar University. Undeclared. I hail from Beacon Hills, California, and I have contacts in law enforcement who will not hesitate to run a background check.”

“What kind of a name is ‘Stiles?’”

“The kind of nickname you give yourself in kindergarten when your actual first name contains more letters than the former Czechoslovakia. Is it my turn now?” The boy shuts his laptop.

“What?”

“I can only assume we’re playing 20 Questions. You asked yours, so now it’s my turn.”

He sits back in his chair. “Go ahead.”

The boy – Stiles – leans forward to make up the space between them and plants his chin in the palm of his hand. “How exactly does a werewolf end up teaching English at a lesser-known American university?”

Derek splutters so hard that coffee snorts up into his sinuses and holy _crap_ , does that burn for a second before the healing kicks in. “What – what – _what_?”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “Oh, come on, Professor Hale. Let’s skip all the awkward introductory steps. We’ve known you were a werewolf since before you were even offered the job.”

He splutters again and shoots darting glances at all the tables close to them, but none of the other patrons seem to be clued in on the conversation. “ _We_?”

Stiles arches an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you can’t smell the pack on me. I’m told that even when showering regularly, it’s not something that just washes off. Yes, _we_. Eight of us here at Greymar.”

He sits even further back in his chair, stunned. How in the hell did he not notice a pack of eight – a decently sized pack by any standard – running around campus? Greymar’s not exactly a huge place.

When Derek doesn’t immediately respond, Stiles continues right on talking, undeterred. “You can stop glaring at the adorable old couple next to us, you know. I charmed a line around the table so no one would look at my addendum to the bestiary based on the rugaru Ethan and Cole took out last week and get the wrong idea, and it covers auditory cloaking, too.”

Derek finally manages to marshal his face back under control and looks at Stiles flatly. “I have no idea what you just said.”

The boy heaves a dramatic sigh, scribbles something on a corner of notebook paper, and tears it off and hands it over. “Here. There’s a pack meeting tonight at that address, 7 o’clock. It’s about time everyone started getting to know one another.”

Derek looks at the address – it’s a street he knows, just off the west end of campus. He pushes back from the table, slightly in a daze. There are dozens of questions swirling around in his head, but nothing he can pin down. Stiles already has his laptop open and is back to typing furiously. He’s two steps from the door when Stiles calls, “Hey, Sourwolf!” and he looks back on instinct.

The boy grins a wide, wild grin. “Leave the coffee.”

Yeah. Derek is definitely screwed.

 

* * *

 

 Derek spends most of the afternoon trying not to break shit in his apartment and attempting to distract himself through menial labor. Move the couch here, move the couch there, assemble this bookshelf he got from Ikea that has eight thousand tiny wooden parts and blob-like figures in the instruction books that look so fucking thrilled about the eight thousand wooden parts -

How? _How_ did he not know? He _checked_ for local packs before he accepted the job out here – had Peter ask all of his contacts, and –

Peter.

His phone is in his semi-clawed hand with an outbound call to Peter ringing before he even finishes processing the thought.

“Nephew!” Peter answers, his voice overly jovial. That’s how things always are with Peter, hopping from one extreme to the next – he’s _too_ happy, then he’s _too_ depressed, then he’s _too_ murderous to even be in the same room with when his thoughts fall to the Argent girl who set the fire that burned nearly their entire family alive –

“Peter,” Derek curtly growls. “Did you know?”

“Did I know what? It is _so_ good to hear your voice.”

Derek lets his claws fully slide out and then digs them into the fleshy part of his palm, allowing the pain to push him back to human form. Fangs make talking on the phone kind of challenging. He struggles to keep his voice calm as he re-asks the questions, this time being specific – that’s another thing about Peter. He’ll dodge anything unless he is firmly, inescapably pinned in your sights. “When I asked you to check the area surrounding Greymar for existing packs, and you came back two days later and said no, the closest pack would be the Ritter family in Portland, and they were okay with me living just outside their territory. Did you know about the pack of eight that apparently fucking _attend_ the school?”

There’s a beat of silence, then Peter says, “Ah, well. I couldn’t exactly risk you falling to Omega, could I, nephew?”

“So instead you sent me, unannounced, into a strange pack’s territory without even letting me _know_ so I could do them the common courtesy of saying ‘Hey, I’m Derek, promise I’m not trying to kill anyone, I’m just here to teach’? Peter, they could have _killed_ me!”

“Did they?”

Peter’s abrupt question stops Derek in the act of shredding the bookshelf’s instruction packet into confetti. “What?”

“Did they kill you? Or try to? Have they been even slightly hostile?”

Derek sinks slowly to the couch. “No. Not really. One of them invited me to a pack meeting tonight.”

He can practically hear Peter’s oily grin spreading on the other end of the phone. “Good. Derek, I know your opinion of me isn’t very high, but you’re one of my last remaining family members. As I said, I didn’t want to risk you falling to Omega, even though you seemed so determined to do so when you left here. When you asked me about Greymar and I discovered the McCall pack, it seemed like the best option out of a host of shitty ones.”

Derek’s quiet, thinking. Peter cursing means that he’s falling out of his crappy “I’m the Alpha” façade and might actually be capable of holding a real conversation. “What did you find out about them?”

“Not much, honestly, but they’ve gone up against a lot of bad shit in the past and come out the other side mostly intact. I spoke with their Alpha and Emissary before you moved. They won’t make you join, but they’re fine with you being on claimed land so long as you agree not to harm anyone. Even said they’d watch out for you against hunters in the area.”

“Peter, I – “

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” the older wolf cuts him off, and for a second it’s like they’re kids again – Derek’s 6, Peter’s 13, conspiring on a prank to play on Laura. And then the armor _schicks_ back up into place when Peter continues, “Very well, nephew, is there anything else?”

“I – uh – no,” Derek manages, still reeling from the information and the fact that some part of Peter – no matter how minute – actually seems to still care. “Thanks, Alp – thanks, Peter.”

The phone makes a small _click_ when Peter disconnects, and Derek stares at it in astonishment before shaking himself out and digging a roll of Scotch tape out of a drawer. Time to reassemble the happy blob figures and get back to putting the bookshelf together.

 

* * *

 

At 7:02, Derek is standing outside a renovated firehouse, checking the address from Stiles’ note against the GPS on his phone and wondering if he’s making a big mistake. He left his old pack – what was left of his family – and moved clear across the country to start a new, supernatural-free life. Being a werewolf ended up causing so much heartbreak and loss that he all but swore it off, so what is he doing, about to willingly walk into another pack’s den?

It’s Peter’s words that get him in the end. And common sense, really – he likes Greymar so far, and if there’s already a pack here, custom dictates that he should at least try to be on friendly terms with them and make it clear that he’s not a threat. Tentatively, he knocks on the door, and pattering footsteps inside preclude Stiles swinging open the door while shouting over his shoulder, “Isaac, don’t encourage him!” before turning back to Derek and giving him that same wild grin from earlier.

“Hey! Glad you made it. Come in! Shoes stay by the door.” Stiles walks back into the house immediately, leaving Derek pretty much no choice but to untie his boots and follow. He catches up as they enter what looks like a main living area, and Derek is immediately faced with 6 snarling, half-shifted werewolves, one amused-looking human male who offers a friendly wave from one of the several couches in the room, and Stiles, who stomps a foot on the ground, mutters something under his breath, and causes a ring of mountain ash to fall out of the sky and into a perfect circle around Derek.

“Cool, Stiles!” Remarks the other human.

"Thanks,” Stiles says, brushing imaginary dust from his hands. “Been working on that one. Now, Derek, sorry for the upfront hostility, but – guys! Seriously, with the Beta faces? We talked about this!”

One of the wolves abruptly shifts back, revealing himself to be a tall, lanky guy in his early twenties with curly blond hair. “You’re the one with the mystical circle of mountain ash.”

“Yeah, which renders all other forms of aggression basically _redundant_ , Isaac.” Stiles shoots an exasperated look at the wolf standing closest to Derek. “You going to help me out on this?”

The wolf flashes red eyes at Derek once, before turning to the rest of his pack. “He’s right, guys. Everyone back down.”

One by one, they all return to fully human, and Derek is left in a room of –

“Kids,” he says, startled. “You’re all just kids.”

“ _Kids_ is what we were six years ago when a rogue Alpha showed up in Beacon Hills and started biting anything that moved,” says the Alpha, turning back to Derek. Derek appraises the way he moves, the way the rest of the pack seems to orbit him, and although the guy’s young, there’s something _right_ about him, and Derek knows without a doubt that he’d submit to this wolf. He’d be a Beta to this Alpha, and he’d trust this Alpha to lead him.

If he were, you know, looking for a pack. Because he’s not.

“A lot’s happened since then,” the Alpha continues. “We’re not kids anymore.”

Derek holds up his hands innocently. “I didn’t mean offense. I come from a family-based pack, not a self-made one. I’m not used to everyone in a pack being the same age.”

“We know about your old pack. Like I said earlier, we did our homework on you before you were even hired here,” Stiles says, and then his eyes darken. “We’re sorry that you’ve lost so many people you care for.”

Derek struggles to keep his emotions off his face. “It was a long time ago.”

“We’ve lost people longer ago,” says one of the other betas, a young man with short brown hair and an absurdly strong jawline. The other human reaches out to take his hand. “We still miss them.”

Derek swallows hard against the lump in his throat. “What am I doing here?”

“This is our third year on this campus,” says the blond one – Isaac.

 _Funny,_ Derek thinks as Isaac continues to talk, _how the Alpha’s so content to let his betas speak for him_. Back home – and in all the other packs he encountered growing up – Alphas were always the primary speakers, especially with an outsider in the mix. Alphas, or the pack’s Emissary. He tunes back in to hear Isaac finish some sentence with, “…so no one has any problems.”

“I’m not looking for trouble,” Derek says. “I didn’t even know there were other werewolves at Greymar. I just needed…something different.”

“That’s what your uncle said,” Stiles says thoughtfully. “He’s a total creep, by the way.”

“Do you want to join our pack?” The Alpha asks sharply.

“No,” Derek says emphatically.

“Do you mean harm to our pack?”

“No! I just said, I didn’t even know you guys were here.”

The Alpha nods to Stiles, and Stiles slides a few steps to break the circle of mountain ash with a socked foot. The Alpha strides forward, smiling broadly, and shakes Derek’s hand firmly. “Great! I’m Scott McCall, and I run this little shindig.”

“He _thinks_ he does,” Stiles says with a roll of his eyes. “Everyone knows I’m actually the one in charge.”

“About that,” Derek interrupts before the introductions can continue. The abrupt changes in atmosphere are making his head hurt, but he definitely has questions.  “What are you? With the whole magic circles thing?”

Stiles grins. “Longer story that we’ve got time for now, buddy. C’mon, meet the rest of the pack.”

And so he does. The Beacon Hills contingent is Scott and Stiles, along with Isaac Lahey, who’s Scott’s second, and Ethan Bresner, who’s dating the pack’s other resident human, Danny Mahealani. Newer to the pack are Bree Thompson, who’s a year younger than the rest of them and met them by chance when she decided to attend Greymar, and Cole and Tiffany –

“Argent,” Derek snarls, dropping into a fighting stance and letting his fangs slide out. _Argent, like Kate, like my entire family burning alive -_ Bree and Scott throw themselves in front of him, but it’s Stiles who puts a hand on his chest and forces him to take several steps back in quick succession to avoid being knocked on his ass by the sheer power rolling off the human in waves.

“Cole, Tink, you good?” Stiles demands, without breaking eye contact with Derek.

“Yeah,” comes a shaky response from behind her. A shaggy head of blond hair and huge brown eyes peek out at him from between pack members’ elbows, and Derek realizes that Cole’s even younger than Bree.

“Yes, _Argent_ ,” Stiles confirms, apparently satisfied that Cole and Tiffany are okay for the moment. “And _ours_. We know what Kate Argent did to you, Derek, but this pack has a long history of allegiance with certain Argents, and when Cole and Tink were turned accidentally, we got them away from other, less understanding family members. Is this going to be a problem?”

Derek is caught in a swirl of hazy, nightmarish flashbacks and guilt. A girl he thought he loved, a broken trust, flames illuminating the night, the smell and sound, his mother’s screams…

“HEY!” A shout breaks through his memories and drags him back to the present. “I said, is this going to be a problem?”

Slowly, Derek shakes his head and straightens up, willing his fangs to recede into his gums. “No. No, I can’t…it’s fine. I’m okay.”

Convinced that Derek isn’t about to slash anyone’s throat, Stiles pushes through the pack to the Argents and pulls each one in for a hug. “You sure you’re okay, kiddos?”

“Bloody brilliant,” the boy, Cole, sighs, and it’s that’s not a sure sign that he’s British, Derek doesn’t know what is. “Just startled me for a mo’, that’s all.”

“You okay with him staying, Cole?” Scott asks, still holding Derek in place with Alpha eyes.

“It’s all right, Alpha,” the boy says, slowly making his way forward, keeping Stiles’ fingers locked in his. The other Argent, the one Stiles keeps calling Tink, looks even younger, and trails them with a finger notched in Cole’s belt loop. Cole comes to stand in front of Derek and looks up at him evenly. “I’m not Kate,” he says. “Neither is Tink. We never even met her. I’m a wolf now, and I got tossed out of my family. This is my family now – my pack. Tink?”

Cole loops an arm backwards and pulls the girl forward. She scuffs at the carpet with her toes for a few seconds, giving Derek time to further study her. She can’t be more than twelve or thirteen, and with the blonde pixie cut and the tiny frame – the nickname makes sense.

Cole prods her in the side again to make her speak. “’M not Kate,” she finally says. “Look, you don’t have to, like, _like_ me or whatever, but me and Cole are stuck here and so – yeah. Pack, family. Whatever.”

Derek stares at the little former hunters. He still doesn’t trust either – probably never will – but there’s so much earnestness shining up out of the Cole’s eyes and so much careful indifference from Tink that he shrugs and relegates his well-earned trust issues to a corner of his mind.

A timer goes off somewhere to Derek’s left, and Danny’s up off the couch in an instant. “Dinner’s ready!”

The pack cheers, and the tension in the room dissipates so quickly that Derek’s almost not sure it was real to begin with. Again with the group mood swings.

 

* * *

 

Dinner with the McCall pack is comfortable. It’s so comfortable that it makes Derek _un_ comfortable, and he finds himself thinking back through the bookshelf instructions and trying to figure out what he missed that caused the entire thing to collapse in a pile of sawdust when he put the first book on it so he doesn’t have to pay attention to how amazing it feels to be around a functioning pack again. Everyone is smiling and laughing, and they bicker in that way you can only do when you know someone’s in your life for good. He tries not to notice the easy physical contact between everyone – Isaac and Danny’s shoulders pressed together as they dish out seconds and thirds, Bree and Tink linking elbows throughout most of the meal, Scott’s hand trailing along the backs of everyone’s necks when he gets up to use the bathroom. He tries not to hear the calm, quiet conversation Scott and Cole have in a corner of the kitchen when the meal’s wrapping up (“You don’t have to call me Alpha, Cole, we’ve talked about this.” “I _know_ , I wasn’t thinking, it just came out!”).

He even attempts to ignore the casual way they follow pack dynamics – Scott’s the first one to take a bite of food, the younger ones look to Isaac for guidance if Scott’s busy, the entire conversation seems to flow through Stiles – but it’s too damn interesting not to watch. With his mom and dad as Alpha and Second growing up, it never really occurred to him to watch the power flow between them, because it was just normal family stuff. Here, though, with Scott and Isaac in those roles, it’s somehow still just as easy, just as natural.

He’s having some trouble reconciling Stiles with Cassidy, though.

Cassidy was his family’s Emissary before the fire, and while she was perfectly nice – if you could ignore the occasional fortune-cookie, Yoda-esque advice – she was never this _involved_. Derek can’t imagine an Emissary actually living with the pack she serves, or being this familiar with them.

“Derek? Derek!”

He blinks out of his train of thought to find everyone looking at him.

“You okay?” Danny asks. “Looks like you spaced out there for a second.”

“I’m fine,” Derek says. “Just a lot to take in. I’m still trying to figure out how I never noticed the eight of you on campus except for Stiles those couple of times.”

“Do I look old enough for university?” Tink snarks, and he’d be offended by her tone but it’s the first time she’s spoken without being asked a direct question all night. “I’m in junior high.”

“And I attend high school,” Cole continues. “We both go to school in Stovington, so you wouldn’t have seen or smelt us on campus.”

“I’m human, but you wouldn’t be able to smell me – or Ethan’s scent on me – unless you’re in the Computer Sciences buildings,” Danny offers. “I don’t often come out of the lab during daylight hours.”

“Or nighttime hours,” Ethan grumbles, and Derek gets the feeling that this is just a snippet of a long-running conversation. “But yeah, I’m 25, so I’m done with school. I’m a Stovington City cop. Not a lot of cause for me to be on campus.”

“And you’ve seen me around,” Stiles says. “So really it’s just the three of them…” he gestures broadly to Scott, Isaac, and Bree, “that you missed.”

That doesn’t exactly make Derek feel better.

When the meal wraps up, Derek makes himself useful by volunteering to wash dishes, and Scott designates Isaac as the drier. They lapse into a companionable silence, and Derek thanks his lucky stars that not everyone in this pack feels the need for constant chatter, like one Stiles Stilinski.

Because yes, with the last name tagged to the nickname, it’s _Stiles Stilinski_.

Derek watches the rest of the pack mill about in the living room. Scott’s said that there’s actual pack business to deal with, so they’re killing time until kitchen clean-up is done. Bree, Cole, and Tink are trying to pick a movie to watch after the meeting wraps up; Scott and Stiles are laughing over some YouTube video; Ethan’s reading a book on the couch while Danny leans against his legs and does some sort of work on a laptop that makes a sound like a jet engine when he fires it up.

“You okay, man?” Isaac asks after a few minutes, having caught Derek staring at the three youngest pack members for a beat too long. The question is casual, but Derek can feel tension rising in the other man, and he knows in an instant that his dish-cleaning partner wasn’t assigned at random. They don’t trust him yet, and Derek suspects he’ll need to spend a lot of time with Scott, Isaac, and Stiles before that changes.

Does he want that to change? Does he want this pack to trust him?

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” he says quickly, shifting his gaze down to the bowl he’s washing. “In some ways, this is so like my old pack, but in others…”

“They’re Argents, but they’re ours,” Isaac says, echoing Stiles’ earlier words.

“How? If you don’t mind my asking.”

Isaac thinks for a moment, apparently trying to figure out what details to divulge. “Hunter families have rites of initiation.”

“The Argents here make a silver bullet,” Derek offers.

“Or arrowhead. Yeah. For the Argents in Europe, hunters go on their first solo hunt when they turn 17. The situation’s meant to be carefully controlled, but Cole somehow ended up facing an lone Alpha on his own. He was bitten, obviously, but still managed the kill – you know the cure, how if you kill the one that bit you, you can be cured of lycanthropy? Doesn’t work so well when there’s nowhere for the Alpha’s power to go. So Cole, newly-made Alpha, freaks out and instead of going to the hunters’ ceremonial grounds like he’s supposed to, goes home for help.”

Derek lets out some sort of muffled moan.

“Yeah, so you can see where this is going,” Isaac says. “Tink, his 12-year-old sister, not being a full hunter, isn’t at the ceremony. She opens the door, Cole can’t control the shift, out of his mind with Alpha power, and bites her.”

Derek gives a low whistle. “Isn’t…” he glances up at the living room, making sure Cole and Tink aren’t listening in. “Isn’t it part of the Code that if that happens, they’re supposed to, you know…”

“Yeah, and they nearly did.” Isaac takes the last bowl from Derek and signals for him to drain the sink. “Cole and Tink’s parents are real old-school types, and wanted to go through with what they saw as mercy killings. Luckily, one of our Argents, Allison, had made some progress with other cousins during a summer she spent in France and set up contacts with Jackson, a former packmate of ours living in London. The cousins got Cole and Tink to Jackson, and he got them to us.”

“You guys done yet?” Scott calls.

“Just about!” Isaac returns, and the next second he’s up in Derek’s personal space, blue beta eyes flashing a warning. “I get that it’s a long story, and that you’ve got trust shit to work through when it comes to the Argents. And you’re not in this pack, so you don’t have to like them or even interact with them – that’s cool, whatever. But consider this your official warning, Hale. If you ever do a single thing to harm either of them, I will personally rip your limbs off and stuff each stump with wolfsbane before asking Stiles to set you on fire with this nifty little black flame curse he’s got up his sleeve. They’re important to me. We clear?”

Derek’s got at least 20 pounds of muscle on Isaac, but the sheer, unadulterated fury in the younger wolf’s eyes is enough to make him uncertain if he’d win in a fight, especially as an Omega, and that doubt seems to have paralyzed his vocal cords. He manages to nod, and Isaac backs off and moves to head to the living room.

Derek clears his throat. “Wait, Isaac. Where’s Allison now? She’s obviously not here, so is she still in France? Or in London, with the other one – Jackson?”

Isaac pauses, but doesn’t look back. “Allison’s one of the ones we lost,” he says, so quietly that Derek can barely hear it, and then continues out into the living room where he scoops Tink up over a shoulder and ignores her squeals of protest. Derek follows more sedately, still processing, and settles into an armchair on the fringes of the group.

“All right, guys,” Scott says, clapping his hands a few times after extricating himself from an impromptu wrestling match with Ethan. “I’m officially calling this meeting of the McCall pack – plus guest – to order.” He turns to Derek. “Since you’re not actually part of the pack, you can’t really be here for official pack business stuff, sorry, dude.”

“Right, sorry,” Derek begins. “I’m new to this whole Omega thing.”

“But you also can’t go just yet,” Scott continues, causing Derek to freeze halfway through the act of pushing himself out of the armchair. Does he know too much about Cole and Tink now, so they’ll have to force him to join up or kill him? Are they actually going to kick him off claimed territory for not being buddy-buddy enough? Is Peter hiding in a corner somewhere, waiting to spring out and force him to swear eternal fealty or some equally arcane bullshit? Scott can apparently read the worry on Derek’s face, because he says, “Aw, crap, sorry – I’m no good at this stuff, Stiles, could you maybe…?”

The Alpha turns a set of puppy dog eyes on Stiles, who groans and lifts his head from Bree’s lap. “Seriously? Dude, being your Emissary is such a load of crap, you just use me when you don’t feel like putting enough words together to make a sentence.”

Derek manages not to react to that externally – _yeah, Stiles is_ definitely _not from the same school of Druidism as Cassidy_ – and focuses on Stiles turning to face him. The boy makes a few expansive gestures with his hands before saying, “Anyway! Derek. Yeah, the reason you can’t leave is because we told your uncle we’d watch out for you if any hellish shit came your way, and we’re reasonably certain that you’ve been marked for death.” 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Derek continues to get to know the McCall pack and goes on a roadtrip with Stiles.

Derek responds to the incredibly underwhelming declaration of his impending doom with merely a tweaked eyebrow, and Stiles, flustered, babbles to fill the silence. 

“I know, right, what a thing to say, but you see, the thing is – Lydia’s almost always completely right about these things. Once she got over the whole ‘but I don’t _want_ to be a banshee’ thing and actually started paying attention to her powers, everything got so much clearer and, well, she’s been having these dreams about you…yes, Isaac?”

 Stiles stops speaking as Isaac puts a hand in the air, like he’s asking a question in class.

“I think you lost him,” Isaac says, jerking his head toward Derek, who’s managed to maintain his impassive expression. In truth, Derek’s doing a pretty good job of keeping up, but he’s thankful for the respite from Stiles’ chatter and a few seconds to organize his thoughts. He met his fair share of the non-werewolf supernatural community growing up – there was that tribe of nymphs that stayed with them for a summer when their home river was having a dam built in; that disaster with the Ala when he was eight, which humans explained away as the worst winter in New England’s last two centuries; the Fae territory 100 miles from Hale land, its border always a social faux pas away from eruption; and, of course, the never-ending rumor of a leprechaun uprising from the vales of Ireland.

Not that Derek believes in leprechauns.

But banshees? _Sure, why not?_

Derek prides himself on not freaking out during those few seconds of silence. He doesn’t know much about banshees – they’re really just stories you tell cubs to get them to eat their vegetables – but he’s heard that the Wailing Women do, in fact, have extremely prescient foreknowledge of the fates of others. It’s not usually blind fortune telling, though – a banshee’s powers are strongest for the people she’s closest to. Derek and Lydia have obviously never met, so he has to ask: “Who the hell is Lydia? Don’t tell me she goes to Greymar, too.”

“Stanford,” Danny volunteers. “Applied mathematics.”

“She’s pack, though,” Scott’s quick to amend. “Banshee and distance aside, she’s pack.”

“Same with Kira,” says Isaac.

“Kitsune, in Japan,” Danny supplies.

“And Malia.”

“Werecoyote. Also at Stanford.”

If Derek had been standing, he would have sat down hard at this rapid-fire explanation of the pack’s satellite members. As it is, he just slumps a little deeper in his chair. “Okay, so banshee-girl says I’m going to die. Does she know how?”

Stiles and Scott exchange sideways looks.

“You’ve gotten a lot of new information today,” Scott says slowly.

“Yeah!” Stiles jumps in enthusiastically. “Maybe we can just reconvene next Sunday – you know, give you a chance to soak it all in –.”

“You’re burnt alive,” Tink interrupts loudly, just seconds before Bree slaps a hand over her mouth. Derek’s brain immediately starts to go cloudy, and he’s only dimly aware of Scott protesting that Tink wasn’t supposed to be listening and Tink insisting that she’s nearly _fourteen_ for Christ’s sake, she’s not a little kid anymore –

_Derek is twenty-three years old and completely, irrevocably, irretrievably in love with Kate Argent._

_Kate Argent. Katherine Argent. Katherine Rose Argent. Even her_ name _is beautiful._

I’m going to tell them today, _he resolves, looking at himself sternly in the rearview mirror as he takes a sharp curve on the road back to the pack house._ We’ve been together for a year, and I need to tell them. Yeah, she’s from a hunting family, but she loves me and I love her, and once they get to know her, they’ll understand. They’ll _have_ to understand.

_He’s so engrossed in his pump-up talk that he doesn’t notice it until all six senses kick in at once. He smells it – smoke on the wind, wood and meat and plastic and fabric and metal. He feels it – heat in the air streaming in his windows. He sees it – a billowing spiral of black smoke, half a mile straight ahead. He tastes it – scorched air singeing against his tongue in an explosion of ash and ember. He hears it – the crackle, the roar, and the screams that are destined to wake him up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat for years to come._

_And he feels it. In the most animalistic, primal, wolf-driven part of his brain, he feels it._

_He now knows how it feels to be hunted._

_He takes the last turn so quickly that two of his wheels leave the ground and then he’s out of the car – did he even turn it off? or put it in park? – pelting full-tilt across the lawn toward the inferno that used to be the only place in the world where he actually stood a chance of belonging._

_He can’t get within ten feet of the house. The air is thicker than blood and the heat is searing the top layers of skin away faster than he can heal. He paces frantically, sprinting short distances to try to get a better angle, rage and helplessness threatening to overtake him completely. His thoughts are coming in fits and starts, and he recognizes that he’s regressing into the wolf, all_ pack _and_ help _and_ pack _and_ family _and_ please please please no _and then something shatters above him and glass rains down on his shoulders. A large, indecipherable figure catapults through the second-story window an instant, hitting the ground hard and breaking into two pieces._

_Cora. Uncle Peter._

_Peter drags Cora out of the fire by one arm and deposits her near Derek’s feet, and he forces himself to focus on her face and stay. Stay human, stay sane, stay rational, just…stay. She’s burned, but not terribly. Her heart is beating. She’s breathing. She’ll heal._

_“Derek!” he finally hears, and then Peter’s hands are on his shoulders, claws_ snick- _ing_ _out just enough to break flesh. There’s more blood and bone on Peter’s face than skin. “Are you okay?”_

_"Where is everyone else?” he hears himself yell, looking frantically past Peter and starting to try to force his way into the fire again.  “My mom and dad, Aunt Sara, Laura, David?”_

_Peter plants his heels and wraps his arms around Derek’s chest to hold him back. “It’s too late.”_

_"What are you talking about? We just have to get inside – or maybe they already got away?” Derek’s finding it harder to breathe and see between the tears and the smoke and the tight loop of fear secured around his throat that is tightening, tightening, tightening._

_“Derek!” Peter throws all his weight forward at once, bulling Derek to the ground and wrestling until he’s pinned his nephew against the blackened grass. “It’s too late. The fire forced everyone downstairs, to the basement.”_

_There are windows!” Derek shouts, struggling against Peter’s hands. “The hatched windows, just above ground!”_

_"Locked!” Peter bellows. “We made it to the basement and tried to get out, but the windows were locked from the outside!”_

_Derek hears Peter continue that he realized Cora was missing and broke through the flames to get to her, but it was too hot and killed whoever tried to come after him. He hears it, but his brain is a million miles away – actually, it’s 5.2 miles away, with a stunningly pretty blonde who has a laugh like music, a smile like a secret, and a key to the basement windows of the Hale house so she can sneak in and meet Derek in the middle of the night._

– a hand on his chest, warm brown eyes locking him into place, and long, spindly fingers wrapping around his right wrist and forcing his palm flat over Stiles’ heart. Derek snaps back to the present, vision tunneling in and out, and all he can hear is Stiles’ calm, even-pitched voice, asking him to breathe and focus on Stiles’ heartbeat and breathe and the feel of the boy’s baseball tee under his fingers and breathe and heartbeat, breathe and heartbeat, breathe and heartbeat.

“What in the ever-loving fuck was that?” Cole demands, earning him a sharp cuff to the back of the head from Bree and a shushing from nearly everyone else.

“Panic attack,” Stiles says quietly, still holding Derek together at the seams with his steady gaze. “I used to get them all the time. You okay, man?”

Derek considers. The faces around him look back with concern and kind understanding and openness and pity, and it builds in a wave that topples his tenuous stability to the ground. Then he’s on his feet, out the door, headed to the forest, ready to run and run and run like the guilty fucking coward that he is.

 

* * *

 

He gets back to his apartment building a few hours later and finds Scott leaning against the side of his Camaro, Derek’s shoes resting next to him.

“You left a couple things behind,” the Alpha says, straightening up. “Danny hotwired it, so it’ll be totally fine. Bring it back to the firehouse sometime and he’ll put the wires back in.”

Derek nods mutely, raising a hand to take the proffered sneakers. Scott forks them over and shoves his hands into the pockets of his leather bomber jacket. “Look, man, what went down tonight was pretty heavy, and Tink shouldn’t have – I mean – crap, where’s Stiles when you need him? It was heavy. And a lot to take in.”

Derek doesn’t say anything.

“It’s fine by me that you’re here, fine that you don’t want to join the pack. But I promised your uncle that we’d try not to let you get killed, and Lydia’s pretty worked up about you being in danger. So here.” He pulls one hand free and gives Derek a slightly crumpled piece of paper. “Phone numbers and emails for me, Isaac, and Stiles. Anything weird happens, give one of us a call? Pack meeting every Sunday at 7, and you’re always welcome.”

Scott rolls out his shoulders like he’s physically shaking off the Alpha mantle, then starts to walk down the street, presumably back to the firehouse. Derek watches him for a minute, then abruptly breaks into a jog and catches up. If Scott’s surprised, he has the good grace not to show it. He stays silent, waiting for Derek to speak.

“What happened with Kate,” he begins slowly, not sure entirely where he’s going with this or why he feels compelled to explain himself. “It wasn’t – I’m not, like, emotionally damaged or anything stupid like that.”

“Most of your family was killed by the girl you were in love with,” Scott says, the blunt words somehow sounding gentle coming from him. “If you’re not carrying around some sort of baggage, then you’re a sociopath.”

“I just mean…ugh,” Derek sighs, letting his head fall back so he can watch the night sky as he keeps in step with Scott. “I’m not a person who freaks out. I’m steady. Controlled. A good man in the storm.”

“I believe you.”

They’re quiet again for half a block or so. It’s a nice night, all things considered – clear skies, hazy moon, and Derek can feel the autumn air just starting lead with a biting edge.

“I met Kate, you know,” Scott says suddenly.

Derek looks at him sharply. “What?”

“Yeah. Couple years back, when all of this was just getting started for us. She was Allison’s aunt.”

_Aunt? Kate never mentioned having a niece. Or siblings._

Scott smiles sadly at the sidewalk, clearly lost in memories both good and painful. “You would have liked Allison. Everyone liked Allison. It was impossible not to like Allison.”

“What happened?”

Scott lets out a half-growl. “I _just_ met you, dude. Like, _today_.”

“I know that,” Derek acknowledges. “But – don’t take this the wrong way – your pack has a lot of…triggers. Landmines, almost. I need to know what to watch out for so I don’t step on something wrong and blow us all up.”

Scott grunts at this and kicks at a crack in the sidewalk. “Short version tonight. You haven’t earned the details yet.”

Derek nods in agreement and waits. This is good. Getting information, bonding with the Alpha, not talking about himself. This is good. He can handle this.

“Allison and her parents moved to Beacon Hills when we were in high school. We fell in love before we knew that I was a werewolf and she came from a hunting family. We didn’t know anything back then – the Alpha that bit me took off, and we just sort of had to make it up as we went along. My boss, Deaton, sometimes helped but was mostly just a mysterious not-always veterinarian.”

 _Deaton_ , Derek muses. The name sounds familiar, but he doesn’t interrupt. Scott guides them around a corner and trails his fingers along a streetlamp before resuming the story. “After a while, Stiles and I figured out that her family were hunters, but Allison still didn’t know anything. Then Kate came to visit – she’s Allison’s dad’s sister. Kate and Gerard came to town and everything just kind of…exploded.”

“Gerard, Kate’s father?”

Scott nods. “Kate’s, and Chris’s. Allison’s dad.”

Derek’s mind spins. He’d had the unpleasant experience of meeting Gerard a time or two when he and Kate were together, but there’d never been any indication that Gerard had any children besides Kate.

“Anyway,” Scott says, starting to talk a little faster. “Like I said, everything exploded, but eventually Chris and Allison started to see things our way. Wrote their own version of the code, stopped hating wolves just for being wolves. Then we broke up, she sort of started dating Isaac, and then she died.”

“Wait, what?” Derek blurts, having been completely unprepared for Scott to get to the point so succinctly.

Scott kicks at another crack. “She died. Fighting a demon – one of the tails of a kitsune, if you need to know.”

“Fucking hell,” Derek says under his breath.

Scott nods. “It nearly broke all of us, nearly tore the pack apart. Chris, Isaac, Lydia, and me – we’ve never really been the same. You can’t go back, you know?”

“We move forward with the marks from those we’ve loved inscribed on our souls,” Derek says automatically.

Scott gives him a startled look. “You’re a poet all of a sudden?”

“It’s part of a traditional werewolf funeral ceremony,” Derek explains. He should know, he said the phrase 15 times over during the mass memorial for his family.

“We have those?” Scott makes a face somewhere between awed and irritated.

Derek squints at him. “You don’t know very much about being a werewolf, do you?”

At this, Scott lets out a full-throated growl complete with red eye flash, and Derek’s wolf fucking _whines_ and very nearly forces him to his knees. “Sorry,” Derek chokes out. “I didn’t mean it like that. You seem like a good Alpha and all, it’s just obvious that you’re missing a lot of the pieces.”

Scott cross his arms defensively, eyes still red. “Like I said, we had to figure a lot of it out as we went along. I didn’t exactly have a wolfy Yoda to teach me.”

“Star Wars?”

“Stiles made me. And coined the phrase.”

Derek nods – it makes total sense that Stiles is a sci-fi nerd. “I really didn’t mean offense. But there’s an entire werewolf subculture across the country – across the world, really. Gatherings, festivals, traditions. It kinda sounds like your pack’s been spending so much time fighting for your lives that you haven’t had a chance to learn any of that.”

Scott visibly brightens, eyes fading back to dark brown. “Could you teach us?”

Derek blinks in surprise. “Teach you?”

"Yeah! I mean, you know all of these things, and you’re out here without a pack, and we need – you could be my wolfy Yoda! Unless there’s, like, a textbook. _How to be a Werewolf in the 21 st Century for Dummies_.”

“No, but there’s a Facebook page.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. Some of the people in it are just deranged _Twilight_ fans, but it’s the best way to stay in contact and organize the solstices.”

“Dude.”

Scott’s looking at him with such amazement that Derek can’t stop a grin from slipping onto his face for a few seconds, but ultimately shakes his head. “I don’t think so, Scott. I like you guys – well, you, anyway, and Danny and Ethan seem okay – but I moved out here to get away from all of it. Being a werewolf is what got my family killed.”

“Forward with our souls marked by our loved ones,” Scott says, butchering the memorial phrase but getting the basic concept right. “Moving forward and running from the past aren’t the same thing.”

Derek doesn’t know how to respond to that, but it sounds like something his dad would have said. His dad had been a bear of a wolf – huge and powerful and terrifying – but the epitome of a man – honest, sturdy, and true to his core. He would have liked Scott. He would have helped Scott.

Maybe he _can_ do this. Show up to pack meetings every once in a while, talk about what he knows of werewolf life and tradition. _Be Scott’s wolfy Yoda,_ he thinks with a roll of his eyes. Stiles is going to be the death of him. Royally fucking screwed, honestly.

“You’re wrong about something, you know,” Scott says, and when he stops walking Derek realizes it’s because he’s guided them in a full circle, and they’re now back in front of Derek’s apartment. He’s still carrying his shoes in one hand.

“What?”

“Being a werewolf isn’t what got your family killed. I met Kate, saw her in action, and everything about that woman fucking terrified me, man. What got your family killed was a crazy bitch with an unfounded vendetta.”

That _also_ sounds like something Derek’s dad would have said.

“I’ll think about it,” he says after a beat. “Teaching you what I know, I mean.”

Bless Scott’s goddamn heart if he doesn’t perk up like a puppy presented with a toy. “Really?”

“I don’t know everything, and I’m not saying I’ll be around all the time. But I’ll come to pack meetings when I can, and when I’m there, I’ll, you know…share.”

Scott _hugs_ him. It’s a quick thing – handshake-chestbump-backthump  would be a more accurate term than “hug”, really – but Scott hugs him nonetheless, and Derek honestly cannot remember the last time someone purposefully made physical contact with him other than the couple mixed martial arts crowds he’d run with back in New England.

“It’ll be great, I promise. Anyway, dude, good talk, but it’s a school night and I’ve got a 9AM. See you next Sunday? Unless you see any of that hellish shit Stiles mentioned coming your way, in which case, _call_. Oh, and Derek – _werewolf subculture_? Really?”

Derek shrugs. “I’m an English professor.”

 

* * *

 

On Friday, Derek goes on a date.

Her name is Hannah. She’s twenty-four, a PhD candidate in the Anthropology department, and he met her at a faculty mixer that Austin, the other young professor in the English department, dragged him to. She’s pretty and charming and blindingly intelligent, and she doesn’t seem to mind the occasional silence between them. They chat casually through dinner, attend an experimental jazz concert held in someone’s attic (“Fascinating,” murmurs Hannah. _Actively offensive_ , thinks Derek.), and walk back to her apartment the long way. Derek’s in that agonizing moment of trying to decide if he should ask for a second date or just go in for the goodnight kiss when his phone buzzes loudly, startling the both of them.

“Sorry,” he apologizes, scrabbling to get it out of his pocket. “Sorry, I could have sworn I turned it off – what the hell?” He stares at the caller ID – Stiles. (Yes, he programmed their numbers into his phone.) Why in the hell is Stiles calling him at 1 in the morning?

He peeks up at Hannah, who’s smiling at him. “It’s okay,” she says. “Go ahead and answer.”

“Are you sure? I’m sure it’s nothing, it’s just these kids I know –.”

The rest of whatever weak excuse he’s going to make is cut off when she steps forward, rests her hands on his chest, and presses up onto her toes to kiss him. It’s short and sweet, and Derek’s heart coughs and turns over like the engine of a car that’s been sitting in a garage gathering dust for years.

“Answer,” she breathes, pulling back. Derek moves with her, but she pushes him away gently and he lets her keep him at bay. “Answer that now, and call me later?”

He nods, too dumbfounded for words, and watches her bounce up the stairs into her building. Then he swipes to answer the call and growls, “This had better be a really big fucking deal, or I’ll rip your spleen out of your body and eat it in front of you.”

“Charming,” Stiles says. “Where are you? I’ve got an errand to run, and Scott says you’re coming with me.”

 

* * *

 

This is how Derek winds up climbing out of Stiles’ jeep at five on a Saturday morning in the middle-of-fucking-nowhere, Washington. After it became clear that Stiles wasn’t going to divulge the destination or purpose of their little road trip, he’d dozed off, expecting to be woken up in twenty minutes or so. But no, Stiles had driven straight through the night, they’ve crossed state lines, and Derek had only woken up as the passed into Olympic National Forest. Now he blinks owlishy in the pale yellow fingers of dawn creeping over the horizon and shivers – it’s cold up here in the mountains, even for a werewolf.

Stiles comes around the back of the Jeep and hands him a sweatshirt – the hoodie Derek smelled on the first day of class.

“Thanks,” he says grudgingly. “Are you going to tell me what the hell we’re doing up here? Besides severely trying my patience?”

Stiles hauls a duffel bag out of the trunk but doesn’t say anything. Derek watches him carefully, assessing the younger man with something perhaps close to concern – but that’s only natural, because Stiles looks like _hell_. He’d looked tired when he picked Derek up, but now, with sunlight throwing his features into sharp relief, Derek can tell that there’s more to it than that. The bags beneath Stiles’ eyes look like they’ve been bruised to the bone, he’s paler than he should be, and every line in his shoulders speaks to tension and exhaustion. Derek’s on the verge of asking what’s wrong when Stiles shoves a second duffel bag at him, locks the Jeep, and sets off into the woods. Derek quickly shoulders the bag and pursues, horribly intrigued by this quieter, still-er, darker Stiles.

They hike for forty-five minutes before Stiles speaks. “For the record, I don’t want you here.”

“Okay, so why am I?”

"Scott thought it would be a good idea,” Stiles says, frustration creeping into his voice.

“A good idea for what?”

Derek follows Stiles out of the trees and into a clearing, bathed in dusky blue and rays of pink. His eyes are immediately drawn to the tree dead center in the clearing, and his Yeats, Longfellow, Whitman, Thoreau, and Frost-loving brain starts searching for the right words to describe it, because this is not just a _tree_. This is a Tree – you could stack the old Hale house in it five times over, all balanced on top of one another. If you cut it down – and surely it would be an unforgivable crime against nature to cut down such a Tree – you could make Noah’s ark. Twice. It stretches up toward the sky with arms of brown and green and orange and red; plunges roots as thick as his torso deep into the earth, an anchor to the ground and pathway to the heavens all at once. And there’s even more – a tingle has set up at the base of his spine, a tingle he’s started to subconsciously associate with the non-werewolf magical world.

Stiles interrupts Derek’s poetic waxings by dropping his duffel bag unceremoniously to the ground and starting to dig things out of it. Large candles, a coil of rope, bunches of plant clippings, and jars of dust or some other substance emerge. Curious, Derek peeks inside the bag he’s carrying, but this one’s contents are much more mundane: food and a blanket.

Derek holds in his questions, as it’s apparent that Stiles is just going to be standoffish and silent. So while Stiles begins to set up whatever it is he’s doing, Derek prowls a wide circle around the edge of the clearing, the tingle in his spine starting to make him uneasy. The Tree is so large that he loses sight of Stiles for a while during each loop, and the boy takes a solid thirty minutes clearing his chosen site, arranging the candles and leaves, spreading the ashes, and carving intricate symbols into the dirt with the sharp end of a broken stick. Finally, he walks a circle around the Tree, making a loop with the rope, ties the other end to his right ankle, and resumes his place in the middle of all his candles. Derek stops his pacing and takes up a squat in a good vantage point, off to the side.

After several more minutes’ silence, in which Derek watches Stiles sway slightly back and forth from his heels to toes and listens to the wind rustling half-fallen leaves, Stiles speaks.

Or chants. Or sings. Or screams, or whispers, or laughs – it’s somehow all of these things and none of them, and it’s in a language Derek’s known since the day he was born but has never heard before.

The candles and circles of ash blaze up around Stiles. He doesn’t seem to notice.

Lines of light spiral up the trunk of the Tree. Stiles doesn’t seem to notice.

His feet leave the ground and he inches upward into the sky, tethered down only by the rope around his ankle, and he doesn’t seem to notice.

Derek’s not sure how long the three of them are like that – Stiles, floating twenty feet above the ground and oblivious; the Tree, shooting small sparks in every direction; Derek, transfixed by the scene in front of him. It could be minutes, it could be hours, but when it ends, it does so suddenly that he nearly misses it.

A pulse of light and force blasts out from the Tree in every direction, and he just has time to process that it looks like an ever-expanding dome before the shockwave knocks him on his ass. Stiles falls out of the sky and hits the ground hard, unmoving, and Derek stumbles over – he’s half blind and deaf from the pulse, and his healing hasn’t caught up yet. By the time he reaches the younger man, Stiles is stirring and groaning.

Derek wants to ask if he’s okay, but there’s a more demanding question that gets out first. “What in the _hell_ was that?”

Stiles weakly pushes Derek’s face out of his line of vision. “Food first, Eyebrows. Then we’ll talk.”

Derek impatiently gets up, snags the second duffel, and dumps its contents near Stiles feet. Stiles painstakingly confects a beef jerky, peanut butter, and jelly bean sandwich and devours it in two seconds flat, by which Derek is both repulsed and impressed. He chugs about a liter of water, pulls a massive container of cold curly fries toward him, and finally looks Derek in the eye and says, “So, what do you want to know?”

Derek lets out a short bark of a laugh at the sheer absurdity of that question while Stiles continues to inhale food like he hasn’t eaten in a week. _What do I want to know? I just – I mean – well,_ obviously _, because…_

He gives up trying to make his thoughts behave, shakes out the blanket Stiles packed, and sits down. “You’re not a Druid.”

Stiles grins through a mouthful of fries and marshmallow fluff, which is more than a little disgusting to behold. “Not even a little bit.”

Derek nods, pondering this. He steals the remainder of Stiles’ beef jerky and chews thoughtfully. “What’s the tree?”

“It’s a Nemeton. The Druids consider it one of their sacred spaces, but it’s really just a power hub that almost any magical anything can use to juice up.”

 “And that’s what you just did.” It’s not a question – there’s no doubt that Stiles looks significantly more alive and healthy now than he did when they got out of the Jeep.

Stiles shrugs and washes a mouthful of food down with a swig of orange juice. “That’s part of it. You know the blast?” He makes an explosion gesture with his hands, and Derek nods. “It’s a ward. 200 miles in every direction. It lets me know when any supernatural beasties cross the boundary. It’s pretty draining to watch such a big area, though, so every couple weeks I come up here and use the Nemeton to recharge.”

Derek’s math isn’t great, but he knows that a circle 400 miles across covers a pretty fucking huge patch of land. And ocean, since they’re on the peninsula. “Why not make the ward closer to Greymar and keep it small?”

“The pack aren’t the only ones I care about,” Stiles says simply, untying the rope from his ankle.  Having eaten his weight in junk food, he flops onto the blanket next to Derek and yawns up at the sky. “If you have more questions, ask them fast – I’ve got maybe five minutes before I fall asleep, and I’ll be out until Monday.”

“ _Monday?”_

“It takes a lot out of me,” Stiles says nonchalantly, but Derek can see the truth in the statement. The adrenaline of whatever he just did seems to be wearing off.

“What was the point of bringing me?” He asks abruptly. “Was this some sort of warning from Scott? Because you’re obviously pretty fucking powerful – he’s saying that if I screw with the pack, he’ll sic you on me?”

“What?” Stiles says, struggling up to his elbows. “Don’t be an idiot. That’s not Scott at all – Ethan, maybe, or Isaac, or Bree on a bad day, but not Scott. He thought it might help you, I don’t know, rest easier at night. Knowing that there’s more out there protecting you than a bunch of college students. He also thought you might be more likely to let us help you if you feel like we trust you.”

Derek raises an eyebrow. “How does _this_ mean that you trust me?”

Stiles lets his elbows collapse. “Like you said, I’m pretty fucking powerful.” There’s no pride in his voice when he says this – there’s actually a little resentment, if Derek’s not totally off his reading-people game. “Once word gets out that you can do things like put up a 126,000-square mile ward, there’s no end to the sorcerers and Druids and warlocks and Fae that want to grab you and do all sorts of nasty things to you until you agree to be on their side.” A visible shudder runs through Stiles’ body, and Derek wonders just how much Stiles has been through in his 20 years. “So you could probably easily make enough money or earn enough favors by selling me out to whatever creepy contacts you may have to set you and your children’s children up for life. Or you could just kill me while we’re out here, since I’m just a defenseless human.”

“I don’t think ‘defenseless’ is a word I’d use to describe you.”

“Oh, but that’s the best part!” Stiles says cheerfully. “I can’t use it to defend _myself_. If something’s coming after me and me alone, it just…fizzles. Last week at the firehouse, if you’d tried to attack me instead of Cole and Tink, you probably would have been highly successful at ripping my throat out.”

Derek’s silent for a moment, then mumbles, “ _Shit_.”

“Amen, Sourwolf. Two-minute warning – you’re going to have to carry me back to the Jeep and drive home, by the way. Or, you know, leave me out here in the woods and let coyotes eat my unconscious, healing body.”

Two minutes? Derek has at least sixty more questions, and that’s just off the top of his head. He picks the one that, for some unknown reason, keeps circling back to the top of the list. “Scott wanted me here. You didn’t. Why?”

Stiles is quiet for a few seconds. Derek’s about to protest the wasting of precious Q&A time when he finally starts speaking in short, careful sentences. “Scott trusts you. And most of the pack will trust you, because Scott does. But I know what happened to your family, and I know you think it’s your fault. And I know what that does to a person. I know how unstable it makes you. I know little it takes to set you off.”

A minute passes. When Stiles speaks again, it’s even quieter.         

"It took me a long time to be able to trust myself again, and even now, most days are shaky. So Scott can trust you, but I don’t. Not yet. And now, in addition to everything else, I get to live with you having this power over me. One word in the right ear, and I’m dead. Or worse than dead.”

“I’m not going to do that, Stiles.”

“Sure. Scratch out the symbols and pick up the candles before we leave, okay?”

Derek hears Stiles’ heartbeat slow down and his breathing lengthen out as he drifts to sleep. He watches the sun rise properly, chasing shadows back into the forest and warming their little clearing so that as he’s packing up the supplies, it’s warm enough for him to take off the loaned sweatshirt. As he tugs it over his head, the tag catches his eye: _J. Stilinski_ is scrawled across it in messy permanent marker. Filing that away under “Landmines to ask Scott about Later,” he slings both duffels over one shoulder, bundles Stiles up over the other, and follows their trail back through the woods.

           

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2 took forever (sorry!), but I have an actual plot mapped out now, and a timeline to go along with it, and I am SO EXCITED.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Someone new is in town, and they've got a bone to pick with the McCall pack. 
> 
> In other words, the action has finally begun.

Stiles, true to his word, sleeps the entire way back to campus, and continues to sleep when Derek coasts to a stop outside the firehouse around noon. He sends Scott a text that they’re back, but it’s Isaac who comes trotting out of the house in sweatpants and bare feet a few minutes later.

“Sooooo, how was your trip?” Isaac asks in a sing-songy voice, as though it’s the most natural thing in the world for two guys who barely know one another to go on an interstate roadtrip that involves a magical, super-powered tree. He leans over Stiles’ prone form to unbuckle the seatbelt and gently wrests Stiles from his seat, settling him into a fireman’s carry like this is something he does on a regular basis.

 _Which_ , Derek thinks, _it probably is. Stiles did say that he has to do that every few weeks._ “Enlightening,” he says in response to Isaac’s question.

Before he can start the walk back to his apartment, Isaac jerks his head toward the firehouse. “You want to come in? It’s just me and Danny right now, but you look like you could use some lunch, and everyone else’ll drift back at some point before dinner.”

Derek narrows his eyes a bit. “Is keeping me around a lot all part of Scott’s plan to keep me alive?”

“Something like that, yeah,” Isaac laughs. “You coming or what?”

Derek considers the proposition. The rest of his Saturday plans had previously consisted of sitting at home grading papers and possibly going to Greymar’s football game with Austin, but the whole magical-Stiles-Stilinski thing still has him a little rattled, and if someone really is trying to kill him, it can’t hurt to have other wolves around. “Sure,” he says hesitantly, starting to realize that he’s in way, way over his head as he replays the logic that got him to that decision. “I’ll run home and grab the papers I need to grade and shower and stuff. I’ll be back in an hour or so.”

* * *

 

Almost exactly an hour later – Derek is punctual if nothing else – he’s pulling up to the firehouse for the second time that day, neatly parallel parking behind Stiles’ Jeep. He tucks a box of essays – _Pick the worst thing Shakespeare wrote and tell me why it sucks_ , had been the prompt, so he’s actually not dreading the idea of reading these – under one arm and grabs a few bags of groceries out of the trunk. He knows from first-hand experience how much a pack can eat, and with things going the way they are, it looks like he’ll be spending a decent amount of time with the McCall pack. He might as well chip in.

He knocks with the toe of his shoe and waits. A few seconds later, Danny swings the door open with a welcoming smile. “Derek! Isaac said you were coming by. Need help with the bags?”

“You’re human. I’m a werewolf,” Derek says. “No, I don’t need help with the bags.”

Danny chuckles and moves to the side to let Derek in. “Suit yourself.”        

Derek makes it to the kitchen by memory and starts poking through the fridge and pantry, figuring out where his contributions fit in. Isaac waves a lazy hello from the couch, where he’s watching some soccer game, and Danny returns to the floor in front of his laptop – just close enough that his and Isaac’s shoulders can brush every so often. Derek finishes unpacking, assembles a sandwich, and settles himself into the same armchair from last week.

And this is how he casually passes the afternoon with Isaac and Danny. Isaac watches various sports and takes multiple naps; Derek grades entertaining essays bemoaning some of Shakespeare’s lesser-known works and one that tears _Romeo and Juliet_ apart so expertly that he makes a note to congratulate the writer in person; Danny works on his giant laptop and, when Derek inquires as to the nature of his project, offers “Plausible deniability” with a boy-next-door grin smile that has Derek wondering just who, exactly, is the most dangerous member of this pack.

Most of the other pack members do, indeed, show up over the course of the next few hours. Cole’s on his school’s baseball team, and he comes back from practice around 4; Scott returns from a shift at the nearby vet’s clinic shortly after; Bree blazes in swearing a blue streak about the amount of work that Professor Lauderdale – _Austin_ , Derek realizes with an amused grin – assigns. Tink and Ethan are the only ones not back by the time Derek announces that he brought the ingredients to make dinner. Tink’s spending the night at a friend’s house, and Danny explains that Ethan is working an unexpected double; apparently, one of the other officers didn’t show up for his shift.

Even missing three of their number with Stiles still asleep upstairs, the McCall pack is a study in cheerful chaos.  Danny and Isaac man the grill, singing along loudly to some terrible country song. Scott and Bree, in retaliation, find a radio station playing “Call Me Maybe” and blast it so loudly that Derek wouldn’t be surprised if they get cited with disturbing the peace. They eat burgers, grilled corn, and blueberry cobbler on a deck that the pack built themselves the summer they moved into the firehouse. All in all, it’s the best Saturday afternoon that Derek has had in a long, long time.

Then Scott goes to check his phone after Cole complains about it buzzing incessantly, and the pack sees and feels Scott’s mood shift from content to alarmed in the blink of an eye.

“It’s Ethan,” he says, thumbing through missed text messages. “They found the cop who didn’t show for his shift. Found him torn apart in an alley by the docks, anyway. Ethan thinks it might’ve been a werewolf.”

“Another one?” Derek asks dumbly, stunned by Scott’s words, watching the immediate action spurred by them. Bree flips off the radio as she runs upstairs to change, Danny darts out of the room, and Isaac grabs two sets of keys from a bowl by the door.

“No, Tink ripped someone’s throat out on her way back from soccer practice,” Isaac says sarcastically, He tosses one of the sets of keys to Scott, who snags them out of the air without looking up from his phone.

“Ethan’ll have the scene cleared in fifteen minutes,” Scott says, pulling on a jacket. “Danny, where are the –?”

“Badges,” Danny finishes, dashing back in and slapping a handful of very official-looking badges in little leather jackets into Scott’s hand. “You and Bree are Animal Control, Isaac and Derek are Fish and Wildlife. Try to show a little interdepartmental cooperation this time, would you?”

“I’m Fish and Wildlife?” Derek parrots, catching the badge lobbed his way more out of reflex than intention.

“It makes the locals suspicious when four AC blokes show up at once, so Danny splits them up,” Cole explains, miserably watching the others put on their shoes. “Scott says I’m still too young to go to crime scenes.”

“Scott’s right,” Bree says, breezing past them now wearing a sweater and sensible shoes that somehow make her look a few years older. “Thought we were setting Derek up as FBI?”

“Do you have any idea how long it takes to get someone backdoor hired by the FBI?” Danny says, looking offended. “He’s set up for F&W, the Portland police department, and that P.I. firm from Boston we worked with last summer, but the FBI’s going to take a while, especially since Stiles wants it to be legit.”

“What?” Derek asks, feeling hopelessly behind in the swirl of conversation.

“Stiles is insisting that your FBI cover is real, in case anyone digs into it,” Danny says with a shrug. “I can make it happen – you’re already being vetted, actually, so if anyone calls asking if you’re Derek Halstead and did-you-grow-up-in-Atlanta, the answer is yes and I’ll give you your full history later – but it’s a long process.”

“What?” Derek repeats.

“You’re the only one old enough to pull it off besides Ethan, but everyone here knows he’s a cop,” Scott says simply, finally locking his phone and sliding it into a pocket as he stands up. “It’s an advantage we can’t pass up. You in?”

Derek’s reeling, and only barely manages to process Scott’s question. _Am I in? Sneaking onto a potential werewolf-on-man crime scene to investigate. Impersonating federal authorities. Actually becoming a goddamn federal authority, apparently._

This is not why he moved here. This is precisely what he moved to get away _from_ , in fact. And yet here he is, standing in a pack house, an Alpha looking at him and asking for help. A competent, calm Alpha who evidently has the full backing and loyalty of his weird little tribe of young wolves, ex-hunters, and their extremely formidable humans.

A week ago, the biggest concern in Derek’s life was an un-assemble-able bookshelf. Which is still lying in pieces on the floor of his apartment. Shit.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I’m in.”

* * *

 

Derek lets Isaac do most of the talking at the scene, and it takes less than a minute for him to agree with Ethan, who introduces himself loudly as “Officer Messner” for the benefit of the humans around them. The wolf’s scent is still strong on the air and on the body, which has distinctively wide-set slash marks ribboning across the chest and abdomen. This is absolutely a werewolf kill, and one of the most vicious ones Derek’s ever seen.

They meet up with Scott and Bree, who took the same crime scene tour ten minutes ahead of them, at a coffee shop around a few blocks away.

“Werewolf?” Scott asks as they take seats at the table.

“Werewolf,” Isaac confirms, “Didn’t recognize the scent, though, so it’s got to be someone new.”

“I did,” Scott says, frowning at his hot chocolate. “Well, sort of. I know the scent, but I can’t place it.”

“It’s okay,” Bree says quietly. “You’ll figure it out.”

“What if I can’t, and Derek dies?” Scott shreds the little insulator cuff, visibly worried.

Derek startles at this. With all the excitement, he’d almost forgotten about the banshee’s death prediction, and it hadn’t even occurred to him that the new wolf in town might be after _him_.

“No one’s dying,” Bree soothes, putting a hand on Scott’s forearm.

“We’ve tracked down new wolves before,” Isaac offers. “Stiles just picked a bad day to reset the boundary. We get him a bit of fur or something to make the link, and he’ll pinpoint the bastard in no time.”

“Stiles can do that?” Derek asks. “Some sort of tracking spell?”

“He hates the word ‘spell,’ but yeah,” Bree says, gently tugging the mangled cuff from Scott’s fingers.

“Only because Jackson called him Sabrina for a week and got him that black cat when he did it the first time,” Scott mutters.

“What exactly is he?” Derek asks. “ _Is_ he some sort of wizard?”

Before anyone can answer, Scott jumps suddenly and snatches his phone off the table, motioning for everyone to get up. “Cole’s panicking – something’s got to be going on at the house. Come on, we’ll deal with the wolf later.”

They hastily dispose of their cups and follow Scott out of the coffee shop, jogging down the street to where they left Isaac’s truck and Scott’s motorbike. As he trails the other three, Derek can’t help being impressed with Scott as an Alpha. It’s common for werewolves to have a general sense of their pack’s wellbeing, and that’s usually amplified for Alphas, but he’d only heard rumors of those that could pinpoint a specific pack member and feel that beta’s emotions clearly. He also finds himself hoping passionately that Danny and Cole are okay – he might have only known them a week, but Derek’s always been the type to latch on quickly and fiercely. He’s still not comfortable with the fact that Cole’s an Argent, and probably won’t ever be comfortable with that,  but the kid’s definitely pack, and Derek will be damned if he lets his pack get hurt again –

Holy fuck. _His_ pack.

He stumbles into the passenger seat of Isaac’s truck, struggling with the realization that he considers the McCall pack to be his. It’s been a _week_. Yeah, sure, quick latcher and all of that, but after a _week_? He needs to get his shit together.

Luckily, Isaac’s silent the entire way back to the firehouse, giving Derek a chance to get his ridiculous emotions under control. Worry has both of them tied into knots by the time Isaac slams the truck into park, and Derek is out and sprinting to the house by the time Scott and Bree skid to a halt in the driveway. Derek throws open the front door and the new scents assault his nose immediately – the same scent as down at the docks, in addition to a second one that Derek doesn’t recognize. He hears Isaac mutter “No fucking way” and then yell for Scott when the scents hit him, but Derek doesn’t stop to ask – his wolf is ignoring the very stern talking-to Derek gave it during the ride and pushes him forward towards the living room, barking _pack_ and _hurt_ and _protect_ into his mind with nearly blinding force.

Danny and Cole lie in crumpled heaps on the ground near the overturned coffee table. Derek miraculously has the presence of mind to listen for their heartbeats as he runs toward them, and his wolf whines in relief at hearing two steady rhythms. “They’re okay!” He shouts back toward the door, dropping to his knees by Danny. The human is unconscious with a large bump on his left temple and a rapidly darkening black eye, but has no other visible injuries. Derek checks him over thoroughly, peripherally aware of Bree doing the same with Cole just a few feet away, and even more dimly aware of Isaac and Scott having an intense, whispered conversation back by the kitchen.

He lifts Danny easily, moving him onto the couch and straightening out his limbs, then turns to Scott and Isaac.

“What’s going on?” Derek demands. “You recognize the other wolf, don’t you?”

“I didn’t,” Bree says, sounding surprised. She has Cole’s head in her lap and is running her fingers through his hair as he moans softly and starts to come around. “Someone from Beacon Hills?”

Isaac looks at Scott, waiting for a cue.

“Not exactly,” the Alpha says slowly, rubbing a hand along his jaw.

“Motherfucking cocksucking wankers,” Cole interrupts, and despite the severity of the situation, both Isaac and Derek snort back a laugh.

“Cole!” Bree exclaims. “What happened?”

“Motherfucking cocksucking wankers, that’s what happened,” Cole says, batting Bree’s hands away and struggling to sit up. “Those motherfucking cocksucking wankers burst in and—“

“Stop,” Scott says, the tiniest bit of Alpha in his voice. “From the beginning.”

Cole sticks two fingers into his mouth and extracts what looks like a broken molar, looking at it quizzically before speaking again. “Hope that grows back. Anyway, maybe forty-five minutes after you lot went tearing out of here, Stiles woke up.”

“He _woke up_?” Isaac repeats. “How? He never wakes up on Nemeton Day.”

“I don’t bloody know, Isaac, the _point_ is that he woke up and ran down here and started yelling that someone crossed the boundary and – wait, where is he?” Cole cuts himself off, sitting up straighter and looking around the room. “Where’s Stiles?”

“What _happened_ , Cole?” Scott asks. “You’re not giving us much to go on!”

“I’m _trying_ , you bloody idiot!” Cole shouts, then immediately backs down when Scott’s eyes flash.  “Sorry, _Alpha_ idiot, but honestly – Stiles ran down here yelling and two seconds later the bastards broke down the door to the deck and I tried to stop them but Scott, it was just me and there were two of them and they were _so strong_ and Danny got hurt and they took him, Scott! _They took Stiles_.”

By the end of this, Cole’s out of breath and panicking again, and it looks like the only thing keeping him from falling apart complete are Bree’s arms, tightly wrapped around his chest.

Scott looks stunned. Isaac looks angry. Bree looks devastated.

“Who are they?” Derek asks, his voice painfully loud in the otherwise silent room.

 

* * *

 

Stiles wakes up with a pounding headache and the sinking feeling that he is, once again, in the middle of some overly dramatic supernatural shit that’s going to shoot his grades all to hell.

It’s an alarmingly familiar feeling.

This is, like, the eighth time he’s been kidnapped, so he pretty much has the orientation routine down to a science. And luckily, this is the second time this particular band of assholes have been the abductors, so he can put a check mark next to the first question on his usual list.

Question One: Who’s holding you?

Answer: The Alpha Pack. Again. _Un-fucking-believable._

Question Two: Where are you?

To answer this one, Stiles stands up gingerly and starts his assessment. He’s in a small room with a dirt floor and wooden walls – a cellar, maybe. He’s not tied up, but his wrists are shacked together by some metal cuff contraption and he’s chained to a thick iron ring set in the middle of the floor, giving him just enough slack to walk in a little circle. _Better than the time that pack from Idaho wrapped me in rope like a mummy._ There’s a wooden door set into one of the walls, too far for him to reach.

And that’s it. The room is completely bare and empty save him and his chains.

“Well, fuckers,” he says under his breath, cracking his neck and setting his feet. “Let’s see how you like the tricks I’ve been learning while you were away.” He closes his eyes and reaches into his mind for the weird little pulse of power that lets him do unspeakably cool shit when he’s actually got it under control.

He can’t find it.

He blinks and tries again. Still nothing. It’s completely gone, cut off from him.

“ _Fuckers_ ,” he says again, more emphatically this time. “What’d you do, build this thing out of Romanian Oak? Of course that’s what you did. You built the entire room out of Romanian Oak and closed me into it.”

 _That_ had been a fun part of his study-abroad-in-Ireland-that-morphed-into-nine-months-of-travel-across-all-of-Europe-and-Russia, when what was supposed to be a few days of backpacking through a Romanian forest with a couple half-ogres he’d met at a dive bar turned into an exceptionally painful lesson that wood from a Romanian Oak interferes with whatever magic it is that Stiles has.

“Clever, isn’t it?” says a familiar voice behind him, and Stiles whirls to see two of his very least favorite werewolves at the door. Deucalion leans against the doorframe, as creepily elegant as always, and Mara prowls into the room on the balls of her feet, somehow managing to look completely predatory without shifting forms in the slightest. Stiles forces himself to stand perfectly still in the middle of the room, purposefully not following Mara’s movements around the walls.

“You say clever, I say cheating,” Stiles says, injecting as much pep into his voice as possible.

“Knowing one’s enemy's weaknesses is hardly cheating,”

“About that,” Stiles says. “Do we still have to be enemies? Can’t we all just, you know, have a beer, laugh about old times, and you lot can get the fuck out of here and stop coming back?”

 Mara sneaks up behind him and stands so close that he can feel her body heat, and a shudder runs down his spine when her breath touches the back on his neck. “Now, Stiles,” she purrs. “Didn’t we have fun together last time we were in town? You, me, Roger, Donahue…” she trails off, running a claw around his earlobe, and he can’t tell if he wants to puke or strangle her. Probably both.

“You’re going to take down the ward you have set around this region,” Deucalion says, and it’s the first time Stiles has ever appreciated anything Deucalion has said because it gives him something to focus on other than the dangerous, hazy memories he has of his first imprisonment with the Alphas.

“The hell I am,” he says, doing his best to ignore Mara’s hands snaking around his hips and roaming over his stomach.

“Well, you’ve certainly filled out nicely,” she whispers into his ear. “Been training for the big bad wolves, have you? I liked you before, Stiles, but this…this is so much better. Think about how much longer you’ll be able to hold up.”

Deucalion unhitches himself from the wall and stalks closer. “You will. You will take down the ward, and you’ll use your tracking magic to pinpoint each of your pack’s locations.”

Stiles sighs. His exterior control is starting to break down a little, Mara’s hands and words spurring little flashbacks of her claws flaying his skin, Roger holding him down and whispering _No one will hear you if you scream_.

“Fuck you, _Demon Wolf_ ,” he sneers. “I’m obviously not going to help you, and you obviously have no idea what you’re dealing with. Why should I be scared of you?”

“Because, boy,” Deucalion sneers, leaning so close that Stiles is surprised his breath isn’t fogging up the designer sunglasses, “I _am_ the Demon Wolf, and I am going to rain the fires of hell down upon you and your little friends.”

“Duke. Buddy. Listen. You’ve got to remember how this worked out the last time. And the time before that.”

He feels Mara smile ferally against his shoulder. “I remember that Deucalion killed your father. I remember you sobbing over his broken body.”

Stiles sets his jaw and mentally blocks himself from going down that path. Three years, and it’s still so raw that getting anywhere near it can send him into a panic attack, and now is _not the time_ for that. “Do you also remember me getting up and destroying half the valley, including the rest of your pack except the two of you, without saying a word?”

Because Stiles does. He remembers very, very clearly how it felt to tap into the spark for the first time. He remembers the unbridled power crashing through him as his world fell apart, remembers directing all of his rage and sorrow and hatred toward the enemy, remembers his undisputed and terrible victory, remembers Scott and Lydia looking at him with fear in their eyes, remembers the high the lasted for days and triggered his nearly year-long spiral into chaos and depression and dark, dangerous magic.

Yeah. Stiles remembers.

“We’ve built a new pack,” Mara says, interrupting Stiles’ painful reminiscence. “More powerful than before.”

“Third time’s the charm, eh, Duke?” Stiles says with a wink.

“It’ll be different this time,” Mara insists.

“You know that’s the literal definition of insanity, right?”

“Mara, stop engaging,” Deucalion says lazily. “If he is determined to require persuasion, we shall, of course, oblige.”

“I’ll get Felix and Teddy,” she responds, letting her fingers trail a line of unpleasant tingles across his chest and down one arm as she strolls from the room.

“Rome, not Teddy,” Deucalion calls after her. “Teddy’s control is still too weak. And after all, we don’t want our guest dying.”

He looks back at Stiles ominously.

“I swear to God, if you say ‘Not yet,’ I’m going to vomit all over your thousand-dollar shoes out of protest at the cliché,” Stiles quips, and Deucalion’s fist swinging toward the side of his head is the last thing he remembers for awhile.

             

           

           

           

 

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A showdown and a revelation. Also, snapshots. 
> 
> Possible blood trigger, maybe? Peruse with caution if that's not your favorite thing.

_This is insane_ , Derek thinks to himself as he casually strolls up the pathway leading to the overly ostentatious house the Alpha Pack is apparently staying in.  _I’m going to get killed. Stiles is going to get killed. We’re all going to get killed_.

He’d heard of the Alpha Pack before, but always thought they were just another campfire ghost story. In the twenty-four hours since Stiles had been taken, however, he’d not only had their existence confirmed, but is now swimming in details of the McCall pack’s two previous encounters with them. The Alphas spent much of their initial visits trying to convince Scott to kill the rest of his pack to become more powerful, ending in a massive blowout during the McCall pack’s senior year of high school that resulted in a lot of death and triggering Stiles’ magical side. Derek can tell that there’s a lot more to the story than that, but everyone clams up when he tries to ask more questions – Scott flat-out tells him that it’s Stiles’ story to tell, no one else’s.

What he  _does_  learn is that the Alphas are led by a seriously creepy but disarmingly charming wolf named Deucalion. He should expect to also find Mara, Deucalion’s second-in-command. Mara and Deucalion are apparently the only two who survived whatever hellstorm Stiles unleashed on them last time.

The plan is simple. Derek will walk up to the Alphas’ door (Scott received a taunting text with an address and picture of a thoroughly bloodied Stiles late last night), announce that he’s Derek Hale, heir apparent to the Hale pack, and that he wants to kill Peter and Cora, take their power, and join up with the Alphas. While he’s spinning the story, Scott, Isaac, and Ethan will break in the back of the house and rescue Stiles.

It’s simple. Straightforward. And really fucking idiotic.

But they’re in a hurry, since Deucalion has a history of killing people when he doesn’t get the desired response right away. And Derek can still see Cole’s face looking up at him right before they left, asking him to please,  _please_  bring Stiles back.

So Derek, being the overemotional sap of a pansy that he apparently is, knocks.

The door swings open almost immediately, and a tall, lithe woman of Latin descent pulls it open and drapes herself artfully against the doorway. She gives Derek a slow once-over, lingering on his crotch and chest. “We’re not looking for any Girl Scout cookies, but I’m sure I can think of a few other badges to help you earn.”

“Mara, who’s at the door?” calls someone from deeper inside the house.

“Tall, dark, and broody,” Mara returns, without breaking eye contact. “Can I keep him?”

A chuckle sounds from just behind her and an arm snakes around her waist possessively, venturing significantly lower than Derek deems appropriate for a semi-public setting. The werewolf attached to the arm materializes from the dimly-lit interior and presses himself up against her line for line, paying absolutely no attention to Derek. “What’s the matter, babe? Kaelie and I not keeping you satisfied?”

As if summoned, another female appears and wraps herself against Mara’s side. “She seemed awfully satisfied last night, wouldn’t you say, Rome?”

Derek watches the three in front of him with a mix of confusion and revulsion, trying to ignore the blatant scent of arousal emanating from them. After a long moment, Mara lets her eyes flutter open, pupils blown wide, and extends a hand. “Care to earn your badge?”

Derek stares, mind completely blank. He was  _definitely_  not adequately prepared to handle this shit.

“Mara, Kaelie, Rome, don’t scare the man away,” a cultured voice interrupts, and the three part to allow an older, smartly dressed man wearing sunglasses through to the threshold. He sniffs the air and makes a satisfied noise in the back of his throat. “Derek? Derek Alexander Hale?”

To Derek’s credit, he manages to keep most of the surprise off his face and get his head back in the game. “Yes. Yes, that’s me.”

The man glides – and that’s really the only word for it – back into the house, beckoning Derek to follow him with the elegant wave of a hand. “I am Deucalion. But of course, you wouldn’t remember me. You were just an infant when we last met.”

“We’ve met?” Derek tries his level best not to shudder when Mara helps him out of his light jacket and trails her fingers unnecessarily down his spine.

“Once,” the other wolf says, ushering Derek into a surprisingly modern living room and directing him to an armchair. “I attended the last Winter Solstice held on the Hale territory.”

Derek squints a little. “I was…two?”

Mara slinks into the room. She hands Deucalion a glass of red wine, keeps a white for herself, and gives Derek a tumbler of whiskey. The two from before – Rome and Kaelie – are nowhere Derek can see or smell them.

“I know you prefer that local porter, but we didn’t have any in stock,” she says with a sly smile that makes Derek thinks the contents of his fridge aren’t safe.

“Just shy of two,” Deucalion confirms. “Laura was six. Such a tragedy, the fire, of course.”

“Of course,” Derek echoes softly. He swirls the drink in his hand, fairly certain he’ll puke if he tries to put something into his stomach right now. Everything about this feels wrong.

“Yes, well, perhaps we should forego the niceties,” Deucalion continues. “Why have you sought us out?”

Derek clears his throat, running the practiced lines in his head, silently thanking his upbringing for teaching him to keep a steady heartbeat in a room of werewolf lie detectors.  “You may have heard that I recently parted ways with my old pack.”

Deucalion swirls a sip of wine around in his mouth for a long moment before answering. “We were made aware.”

Derek bristles inwardly. What the fuck business does this douchebag have knowing things about his family? “Yes, well, I moved here to get away from them. Then I learned about your pack’s…sources of power, and realized that there may be a better use for the remnants of the Hale pack.”

He fights down nausea over the words coming out of his mouth and tries to listen to Danny’s voice in his head from their earlier rehearsal.  _You’ve got to sound more sinister, dude. Make it convincing._

Deucalion smiles, and it’s thoroughly disconcerting. “You wish to join us.”

It’s a statement, not a question, but Derek swallows hard and nods anyway. In his periphery, he sees Mara extricate a cell phone from her ridiculously tight jeans and accept a call, walking out of the room. The low-level alarm that has been ringing in the back of Derek’s mind since he knocked on the door ratchets up a notch.

“Interesting,” Deucalion murmurs. “Is that why you reek of the McCall pack?”

Derek sets his jaw, inordinately thankful to Isaac for making him practice this one, and tries to shrug carelessly. “They attend Greymar, where I teach. They’ve tried to convince me to join their pack.”

Mara prowls back into the room, grinning and twirling her phone between claws. “You’ll never guess who I just got a call from, Duke.”

“Do tell, my dear,” Deucalion responds, taking another sip of his wine.

“Teddy just wanted to let us know that he and Cassie spotted three of our favorite McCall pack friends, including their dear Alpha, trying to break in through a window to the cellar.”

“Fascinating,” Deucalion says, appearing to mull this information over. “Where are they now?”

“Oh, Cassie trapped them,” Mara says gleefully. “Mountain ash and wolfsbane cocktails for all. Rome and Teddy are tying them up now.”

Despite all his years of fibbing to his parents, Derek can’t help it – his heart stalls for just the briefest instant.

“Oh, don’t be absurd, Derek,” Deucalion says, as though Derek’s heartbeat is a vocal admission of guilt. “Your story was never going to hold up, it was merely amusing to see what lengths you would go to. We’ve known of your association to the McCall pack for nearly as long as you have. Mara, have the boys bring our guests upstairs. All four guests.”

Mara saunters from the room, leaving Derek to glower to Deucalion and wonder what he could use in the room to his advantage during a sneak attack.

“I wouldn’t recommend it, Derek,” Deucalion says, draining the last of his wine. “Don’t let the sunglasses fool you. I’m older than you and more powerful than you could possibly imagine.”

Derek’s trying to think of something to say when multiple footsteps draw his attention. Mara strolls back in, dragging Ethan by his hair. Kaelie, the small blonde from the doorway threesome, pulls Isaac behind her. The other member of the threesome, Rome, carries Scott over one shoulder. All three of the McCall pack seem to be sedated somehow –  _what did Mara say? Mountain ash and wolfsbane cocktail? –_ but no one’s obviously injured other than that. Scott looks the most alert, and struggles feebly against Rome’s hands.

“Well done, Cassidy,” Deucalion praises, pulling Derek’s attention away from situation assessment because there’s absolutely no fucking way that –

“It wasn’t particularly difficult,” Cassidy says, brushing an invisible speck of dust from her sleeve.

“Cassidy?” Derek gapes, staring at the Hale pack’s former Druid Emissary.

“She goes by Cassie now,” Mara says, slinging a free arm around Cassidy’s shoulders.

Cassidy, looking repulsed, immediately shrugs away. “No, I do not. Hello, Derek. It’s good to see you.”

“I can’t say the same,” Derek says, his shock starting to give way to anger. “What the hell are you doing here?”

She raises an eyebrow and tucks a strand of hair back into an already perfect bun. “I’m an Emissary, Derek. This is what I do.”

“No, I – we thought you  _died_. In the fire.”

She makes a tiny sound of disapproval in the back of her throat that Derek remembers all too well from childhood. “Hardly. I merely required a new position. Alpha Deucalion offered.”

A dragging sound startles Derek out of reminiscing and he jerks his eyes to the door again, where yet another Alpha is towing Stiles, strapped to a wooden chair, into the room. The Alpha purposefully lets Stiles’ knee and shoulder bang against the doorframe, eliciting a muffled groan, before depositing the chair in the middle of the room and taking a few steps back. As Derek appraises Stiles –  _black eye, bruised jaw, blood everywhere, guessing a few broken ribs from the way he’s wincing when he breathes_  – he sees Stiles taking stock of the situation, and can only imagine the whirlwind of creative swear words probably running through his head.

“And such a blessing you’ve been to us,” Deucalion praises. “Now then, to business. Derek, you came to us under the false pretense of wanting to rid yourself of dead weight, become powerful, and join our pack. While you may have intended deceit, I am delighted to offer you the opportunity to make good on your word.”

Derek settles into a glare he’d perfected at the age of seven, when Laura started training as Alpha-to-be and lorded it over him for a few months.

Unperturbed by his audience’s silence, Deucalion continues. He paces the room slowly as he speaks, making little circles that come ever closer to Scott or Stiles or Isaac or Ethan and every time he’s within arm’s reach, Derek’s wolf snarls a bit louder. “The Hale pack is all but nonexistent anymore,” he says. “Regrettable, perhaps, but truth nonetheless. The power you’d gain from the sacrifices of your uncle and sister would hardly be enough to raise you to the level my pack requires. The McCall pack, however,” – and here he threads his fingers into Stiles’ hair and jerks his head back roughly, exposing Stiles’ fragile neck and causing him to shout something around the rough cloth gag – “is a veritable gold mine of untapped power.”

 He releases Stiles and walks to stand directly in front of Derek, carefully removing his sunglasses and folding them into a pocket. At the same time, the Alpha who dragged Stiles in kicks the back of Derek’s knees sharply, and he collapses almost to the floor – as it is, his claws sink an inch into the hardwood.

“My proposal is simple,” Deucalion continues. “If your former Emissary is to be believed, you should already be well on your way to integrating fully into the McCall pack.” Uncomfortable with exposing the back of his neck to his enemy, Derek cranes his head around to raise his eyes - and the instant he does he is locked in to the Alpha’s clouded, distant gaze. A logical piece of his brain registers that Deucalion is layering the Alpha tone on thick, and that it’s like every Alpha Deucalion has ever slain is commanding him at once, but most of him doesn’t care in the slightest. “Complete your transfer. Kill Scott. Become Alpha of the McCall pack. Kill the rest of the McCall pack. Join us. Revel in power beyond your wildest fantasies.”

Derek’s brain swims as the eye contact with Deucalion holds. He can practically feel his thoughts rearranging themselves to match the logic of the offer.

At the edges of his vision, he sort of halfway notices Isaac and Ethan moving a little more, maybe roused back to consciousness by the impending threat to their Alpha. Small motions are coming from Stiles’ general direction, too.

“I can see you’re struggling with the decision,” Deucalion says. “Very well. You continue to ponder my offer, and I shall play another card.” He turns from Derek, and the instant the eye contact drops, Derek’s brain unfogs.

He’s hit with a wall of guilt that’s nearly instantly transformed into unadulterated rage. He lets out a roar, pulls his claws from the floor, and is actually a few inches into his leap at Deucalion when the Alpha who kicked him takes quick, messy swipes at his brachial arteries. Derek collapses back to the floor in a growing pool of his own blood, already lightheaded, well-familiar with the depth of cuts meant to weaken, not kill.

“Thank you, Teddy,” Deucalion says in an off-handed sort of way. “Now, Scott. Rome, would you help our good friend to his feet, please?”

Scott makes it mostly on his own, shrugging away from Rome’s grasp so strongly that he nearly falls again. Derek watches the Alphas face one another through narrowed eyes, focusing his energy on forcing himself to heal faster.

_“It doesn’t work like that,” Laura says, eyes huge and dark as she sits by his bed._

_Derek, eleven years old, just winces and tries to visualize his bone knitting back together._

_"Even if we could speed it up by wishing, an Alpha broke your leg, Derek,” Laura presses. “Wounds from an Alpha don’t heal as quickly.”_

_"Go away, Laura,” Derek says crossly._

_“You shouldn’t have been in Newman territory anyway,” Laura continues, as if she hadn’t heard him. “We didn’t have permission, and their Alpha had every right to teach you a lesson.”_

_“Stop talking to me like you’re my Alpha!” Derek shouts, his face flushing with embarrassment. “You’re not! You’ll never be my Alpha!”_

Derek jolts out of the memory in time to hear Scott say, “We’ve been through this. It’s not going to happen.”

“Don’t you want to know, Scott?” Mara purrs, and she must have slunk up behind Stiles at some point when Derek wasn’t paying attention because now she’s running claws lightly over the boy’s pulse points. Stiles’ eyes are wide with alternating panic and anger and something that looks like nausea, little movements still quaking his body every few seconds. “What that sort of  _power_  feels like?”

Scott squares his shoulders, and Derek is once again struck by the younger wolf’s presence and sheer…Alpha-ness.  _Alpha-ness? How much blood am I losing?_  “I wasn’t interested in that type of power then, and I’m not interested in it now.”

Seated on the couch once more, Deucalion shrugs carelessly. “Perhaps. But what you want right now doesn’t matter nearly as much as what Felix wants.”

And there it is. Derek’s internal alarm shoots to Defcon 1. He doesn’t know who the fuck Felix is, but adding a new element to the game at this stage? The way Deucalion let the words slip over his tongue, like a delicacy he was loathe to let go? And the way Stiles’ eyes are huge in his head and he’s gagging around the fabric in his mouth, trying desperately to get something out?

_We’re in trouble._

“Who’s Felix?” Scott demands. 

There’s a nearly imperceptible motion in the corner of the room, but every eye in the room tracks to it immediately when a man a few years older than Derek steps out of the shadows. He makes fierce eye contact with Scott, who lets out a gurgled sort of choking noise. The power shift in the room is palpable.

“I’m Felix, pup,” the newcomer says. “And I’m your Alpha.”

Scott takes several deep breaths, and the bit of Derek’s brain that’s most addled from blood loss temporarily wonders if you can get startled back into human illnesses, like Scott’s childhood asthma. “You may have made me,” Scott says after a long minute, “but you are not my Alpha.”

Derek, in that moment, is ridiculously and irrationally proud.

Felix looks over Scott’s shoulder to where Stiles, red in the face from trying to shout warnings around his gag, is still bound to a chair. “Kill him.”

Scott visibly shudders, but maintains his glare. “No.”

Felix takes a step forward, sharing the same breathing room as Scott. They’re both shining Alpha-red eyes, and there’s absofuckinglutely no way that they’re all getting out of this alive –

As it does in the impossible moments right before the shit truly hits the fan, Derek’s world pauses. Instead of his life flashing before his eyes, though, he gets a detailed catalog of the scene in front of him:

Ethan, lurching to his knees as he fights off the sedative.

Deucalion, calmly finishing off the last of his wine.

Rome and Teddy, silently advancing on Scott from either side.

Isaac, eyes glinting gold as he repeatedly snaps a finger to trigger the healing process.

Mara, Cassidy, and Kaelie, leaning against a wall and watching the tension build with hungry looks painted all over their disturbingly beautiful features.

Stiles, who had been silently and frantically rubbing the ropes binding his ankles against the rough edges of the homemade chair for who knows how long, until they finally gave.

Stiles, no longer a focal point for any of the Alphas, tilting his chair-prison onto its back legs.

Stiles, who notices Derek watching him, gives a fucking wink, and throws his entire body weight forward while simultaneously pushing off with the balls of his feet.

The world snaps back to full speed as Derek watches Stiles force the chair into a nearly complete somersault mid-air and crash into the ground, splintering the back and seat of the chair into dozens of pieces.

Stiles is on his feet almost immediately, discarding bits of rope and pulling the gag away from his head. He spits a mouthful of what looks like woodchips on the floor, coughs, and gives Deucalion an exasperated look when his hand comes away from his mouth bloody.

“Honestly, Duke,” he croaks, “Points for creativity and being thorough and all that shit, but I’m going to be digging splinters out of my gums for a week.”

“How?!” Mara shrieks, looking like she’s seconds from jumping Stiles in a fit of rage. “The chair was Romanian Oak!”

“He didn’t use magic to escape,” Cassidy comments, her voice the steady neutral it always is. “Persistence and friction.”

“Bingo, baby,” Stiles says, pointing finger guns at her as he staggers a few steps toward Derek. "Also a quick lesson in Hunter initiation from my good friend Chris Argent." One of the other Alphas – Teddy or Rome, Derek’s having trouble telling them apart – or staying awake – or breathing – moves to intercept him, but Deucalion barks out a quick order to stand down, watching Stiles move with something close to fear on his face.

Stiles drops to his knees at Derek’s side, cackling a little. “That’s right, Duke-y – remember what I did to your precious little pack of Alphas last time and stay the fuck where you're standing.” Inexplicably, he chooses this moment to strip off his shirt, revealing a chest, back, and set of shoulders heavily marked in spiraling, interconnected black tattoos. “You knew about the ward, you knew to use Romanian Oak,” he says, casually dipping two fingers into Derek’s cooling blood and using it to paint new symbols onto his skin. “You know enough to be wary. But how much do you actually know, Deucalion? How much do you know about what I learned in the Azador Caves? What I saw in the Islwyn Mountains? What I did along the banks of the Čierny Váh?”

Stiles’ voice is ramping up to madness, and no one answers. Derek finds his fingers ghosting along the black patterns adorning Stiles’ spine.

“No? You sure?” Stiles prompts. He’s again met with silence, and when he speaks next, all hilarity and light has gone out of his voice and his hands are finally still. His eyes, dark and piercing, seem to focus on everyone and no one at once.

 “You have twenty-four hours. Actually, scratch that – twelve. Twelve hours to get out of this entire half of the goddamn country, or I am coming after you. And what I did before – torching a dozen of you in an instant of blind grief – will seem merciful in comparison to how I will slowly strip each of you of hope, soul, and flesh until the last sound you hear is yourself gurgling for breath through the blood pooling in your lungs. Do we have an understanding?”

There is an interminable moment of singular, deafening silence.

Then Stiles gives a little shiver against Derek’s fingers on his back and looks down to him. “No flirting until we get home, Sourwolf.”

With that, he cracks a bloody, lopsided grin, presses a bloody hand to his own bloody chest, and mutters something under his breath.

* * *

 

Bree plays her favorite screaming alt-rock Russian ska band particularly loudly on the drive to the hospital for two reasons:

One, because Stiles is bleeding out in the backseat of Isaac’s ancient Chevy and Danny said to keep him awake as long as possible.

Two, to passive-aggressively reinforce that this is  _not_ her favorite part of being in the McCall pack. The people she cares about most on the brink of death, semi-frantic trips to the ER when it’s one of the humans or too severe for werewolf healing to handle without a jumpstart from modern medicine, frantic group texts with the three nurses and two doctors they know at Stovington General to see who’s on shift and can help them avoid tricky things like the paperwork incurred by injuries accrued during a midnight battle with a Wendigo.

Yeah. Not her favorite part.

 _To be fair_ , Bree muses,  _it’s been relatively calm for the last year. Relatively for this pack, anyway._

If she’s being entirely honest, she knew it wasn’t going to last. She’s a born werewolf, raised in a family-built pack that roamed the eastern side of the Rockies in what amounted to a biker gang, picking fights with rival packs and local law enforcement whenever there wasn’t something more... _unusual_ around to keep them busy. And there was almost always something unusual around. It just seemed to work that way – like attracts like, or some Zen crap like that.

Bree takes a corner at top speed, floors it on the straightaway.

The decision to leave her old pack hadn’t been hard. She picked Greymar because it it’s small and out of the way and offers great financial aid, and stumbled into the McCall pack during the first full moon of her new life. They’re absolutely nothing like her old pack – except at times like this.

When Stiles gets kidnapped by the psycho Alphas. And Scott, Isaac, Ethan, and their mostly-adopted pseudo-Faculty Advisor Derek go off to save him, leaving Bree alone with a recuperating Danny, a guilt-stricken Cole, and a…well, a Tink.

And then Bree spends two hours obsessively cleaning the pack house because what the hell else is she supposed to do, her Cultural Anthropology reading?

And then all five of them are somehow magically transported directly into the living room, covered in blood and bruises and most of them clearly with some strain of wolfsbane in their systems and Scott all shaken and distraught and Derek starting to heal but basically looking like vampires got to him and Stiles taking care of everyone else and doing healing spells and refusing to even sit down until absolutely everyone else is stable and then nonchalantly announcing that he has a few broken ribs and a punctured lung and could Bree please take him to the hospital because his spells don’t work on himself and UGH –

Bree turns the music up a little bit louder.

She knows it’s different with this pack. Logically speaking, she knows that.

This moment always feels the same, though. That knot of cold and tension and uncertainty that somehow manages to clog up your stomach, your heart, and your throat all without leaving that nasty little spot just inside your right ear that whispers  _something is very, very wrong_ over and over when you’re trying to sleep, when you’re trying to keep it together, when you’re trying to drive one of your very best friends to the hospital –

Bree’s phone buzzes, and she kills the music just in time to hear her text-to-speech app haltingly announce, “Text from – Joe Dawson. I’m on to-night. Waiting for – you. Winter – is coming.”

Despite everything, Bree lets out a short explosion of laughter and heaves a sigh of relief. Joe Dawson, their favorite ER nurse, must have paged Dr. Sarah Winters, who’d been a little bit in the loop ever since the pack saved her daughter from a wildfire (somewhat inadvertently, they’d been hunting a rouge Omega when the blaze started) last summer.

“You’re going to be fine, Stiles,” Bree says firmly, eyeing his pale form lying across the backseat. “You have one perfectly functioning lung. Asking for two is just greedy.”

Stiles gives her a weak thumbs-up.

Bree turns the music back on.

* * *

Unbelievably, life pretty much goes back to normal on Monday.

Derek forces himself to wake up for his 5AM run, and he doesn’t completely hate the (Scott-mandated) company provided by a silent-but-amicable Ethan. He teaches classes at 9 and 11AM, has lunch with Austin and a few of the TAs, and holds office hours until his last class at 3:30. His students, leading their blissfully-supernatural-free lives, grumble about it being Monday. He goes back to his apartment, does laundry, throws some of the “extra” hardware pieces at his fucking Ikea bookshelf in hopes that it will magically finish itself overnight, and goes to bed.

It’s really fucking bizarre.

* * *

“Yeah?” Isaac calls in response to the light knock on the main Psych Lab door.

“Sorry – excuse me?” A lilting female voice echoes around the corners.

“Yeah, what is it?” Isaac calls back. He doesn’t both putting book down or taking his feet off the desk yet. A1944K2 still has a ways to go.

“I’m here for the experiment? I’m in Psych 100?”

“Is that a question?” Isaac shouts.

“No, I – I _am_ in Psych 100!”

“Good to know! What are you doing here?”

There’s a brief pause in which Isaac tries to place her accent – _Irish, maybe?_ \- and when she speaks again, she’s closer. By a little.

“I just transferred to Greymar, so I’m a little behind on coursework Dr. Roderick said that participating in one of the ongoing studies was an opportunity for extra credit.”

 _Scottish?_ “Okay, good for you.”

“Yes! How do I get in?

“Get in where?” Not for the first time, Isaac wishes they had cameras posted in the hallways. He’s been working as a moderator for experiments the Psych grad students design for a over a year, and this is by far his favorite role – be as neutrally unhelpful as you possibly can. It’s a fairly straightforward cost/benefit analysis, really: put the entry door and the sign-in desk on opposite sides of what amounts to a maze/obstacle course, provide no guidance, and see who actually makes it to the desk and receives their extra credit.

“Get in to the experiment!”

Isaac chuckles, mentally placing bets on what type she’ll turn out to be. Some either start cursing at him or quit within minutes; some good-natured-ly wander the maze – which takes exactly 32 seconds to navigate if you know the path – for 15 minutes or so before either finding him or calling it quits in a swing of quiet frustration; a few particularly alert individuals make the deductive leap that finding the experiment _is_ the experiment  and either throw up their hands in disgust or work their way around corners while happily berating him for being useless.

All in all, it’s a pretty good gig.

“Are you _really_ not going to help?” The newcomer asks, and her voice is once again a bit closer.

“Help with what?”

“You’re horrible,” she replies, but Isaac can hear a smile in her voice. “This is the game, then, isn’t it? You’re timing how long it takes me to get there. Or waiting to see how long I’ll try before giving up.”

“You caught me,” Isaac replies, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “I live to deceive.”

“Oh, shut it,” she says, definitely closer again. “For all I know, there’s not even an exit to this and you’re just watching from a remote control room.”

Isaac raises an eyebrow, finally dropping his feet off the desk and pulling his observations notebook toward him. No one’s thought of that particular scenario yet. He’s just scratching in his initials and the time when her footsteps stop echoing as she enters the little control room where his desk resides. Without looking up, he holds out a small blue slip of paper, pauses the stopwatch, and starts to rattle off the spiel.

“Subject A1944K2, thank you for participating in this study and congratulations on completing your trial. Staple this piece of paper to any of Roderick’s assignments for an extra 5 points. It’s tied to your subject ID, so we’ll know if you duplicate it or sell it or anything like that, okay, A1944K2?”

“Natalie,” she interrupts him, and he finally looks up from his notes to see the unbelievably pretty girl standing just a few feet away from him.

“Natalie,” he agrees.

Ten minutes later, Isaac Lahey has a date.

* * *

600 miles away, Lydia Martin waltzes through the door with a designer briefcase/handbag dangling from one elbow and a reusable canvas bag containing Indian take-out from the other.

“Malia, darling,” she calls, depositing her Coach in one chair and the food on a countertop. “Stop inadvertently causing the neighbors to suspect domestic abuse and come eat dinner.”

The banshee’s roommate appears on cue, trotting out of the spare bedroom that serves as a rough home gym and ripping boxing hand wraps from her wrists with blunt, human teeth. “That was _one time_. And it’s not my fault that Palo Alto-ans are completely oblivious to the world of MMA.” She quickly washes her hands in the sink before stuffing her head halfway inside the bag, breathing in so deeply it’s like she thinks she can inhale sustenance. “Chicken pulao? You’re amazing.”

“I know,” Lydia attests, lightly pushing Malia’s face out of the way and proceeding to elegantly plate each dish. She might concede to eating in front of the TV instead of at the table (insisting that Malia sit on the floor so she doesn’t sweat all over the faux-leather sofa, of course), but that doesn’t mean they have to be _barbarians **.**_

Malia bounces to the floor and stuffs a whole piece of naan into her mouth, making orgasmic sounds as she chews with her eyes closed. “Amazing,” she echoes faintly,

They trade daily updates over the food, CNN playing on mute in the background. It’s quiet as often as it’s conversational, but that’s common for them. Even two years later, it’s still strange to be so far from the rest of the pack, so they bask in these little moments when they tiny sub-pack is home, safe, together.

Lydia can’t even imagine what it must be like for Kira.

As Lydia’s brain is, you know, Lydia’s brain, she needs at least four concurrent trains of thought to stay occupied, so in addition to the conversation with Malia, monitoring CNN, and the planning her Linear Algebra 3 assignment, she finds herself once again analyzing her best friend, pondering how strongly she reminds Lydia of Stiles. The two had dated during senior year until Alpha Pack: The Sequel, when the added stress of that situation had caused them to realize that they’re basically the same somewhat immature, anxious, deeply damaged, incredibly dangerous person. They’d split up in a rather horrific public meltdown a week before everything fell apart, and when Stiles went AWOL, Lydia had expected Malia to entirely come undone – but she didn’t. She’d gotten teary-eyed at a single pack meeting, when Stiles’ customary beanbag chair was left unoccupied, and that was it. The next day, her game face was on and no one dared ask if she was _okay_ again.

Malia reminds Lydia of Allison, sometimes, too.

“When’s your last midterm?” Lydia asks suddenly, interrupting both her own perilous musings and Malia’s ramblings about the girl in her Public Health class she had a crush on.

“Uh, couple weeks?” Malia guesses, completely not bothered by Lydia’s interjection. She rolls onto her stomach and snags her backpack with one finger, digging through it to find her planner and nearly knocking a plate of Mattar Paneer onto the carpet with a stray limb in the process. “Yeah,” she confirms after flipping a few pages, “October 18, PoliSci312. Why?”

“Good,” Lydia says, crumbling a piece of naan into dust with her day-old manicure as she finally acknowledges what her supernatural Spidey senses – to use a trademark Stilinski phrase – have been bugging her about for days. “We’re going to need to leave for Portland the next day.”

“Portland?” Malia thinks for a second, then her face clears. “You mean Greymar, to see the pack? We got the all-clear yesterday, Lyds. Stiles is safe. Derek’s safe. Everything’s fine.”

“For now,” Lydia agrees, refusing to make eye contact. Malia knows better than to ask probing questions – Lydia will offer information freely when she’s ready, when she knows more – but she gently stops Lydia’s frantically moving fingers after another minute and crouches down, inserting herself directly into the other girl’s line of sight.

“How worried should I be?” Malia asks softly.

           

           

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It takes me eighty million years to write anything.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Date Night!

Friday somehow winds up being the pack’s unofficial Date Night, and Derek somehow ends up getting ready for his second date with Hannah in Stiles’ bedroom.

“Your hair looks fine, Sourwolf,” Stiles grouches from his bed, which is littered with junk food wrappers, ancient tomes, and other research paraphernalia after a week of pack-enforced bed rest. “Get over here and fill me in on faculty gossip and campus scandals! I’ve been literally dying of boredom.”

“Literally?” Derek echoes, with a cocked eyebrow. In the next second, he dodges a pillow aimed at his head and is then across the room, pressing a hand lightly against Stiles’ side and leeching the pain into black ropes that spiral up his arm and gradually fade. “Throwing things with broken ribs – you’re _literally_ an idiot.”

Stiles attempts to bat his hand away with all the grace of a drunken mongoose, but Derek just catches both flailing wrists and holds them gently against his chest. “Stop,” he says quietly. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”

Stiles looks up at him, all deep brown eyes and unkempt bedhead and sarcasm. “And you’d care _why_ , exactly?”

The instant the pain snaking up Derek’s other arm lessens, he steps back from all points of contact with Stiles and goes back to agonizing over whether the lines of his stubble are even. “Shut up.”

He studiously avoids meeting Stiles’ eyes in the mirror, but that doesn’t stop him from feeling the younger man’s gaze on his back.

“D’you really like this girl?”

“I’ve been on _one_ date with her, Stiles.”

“Yeah,” Stiles hems, “But you _know_ , you know? Even that early, you _know_ you know.”

“And if I don’t know?”

“Oh, fuck off – you know what I mean! As much as you try to be all Greek-god, statue-of-King-fucking-Triton-watching-over-Atlantis, you’re still a person. And I know that the whole wolfy thing means that your perception of emotions and crap is heightened.”

Derek gives up straightening his tie and turns back to the bed, where Stiles has frayed an empty Pringles can into something that looks like it could be used as a weapon. “Did you just call me a mermaid?”

Stiles tilts his head. “Technically? Mer _man_.”

“I’m headed out!” Isaac calls from downstairs. “Someone call me if the Alphas decide to fuck up the first date I’ve had in a year!”

Ethan, presumably also downstairs, says something explicit about who exactly the _fucking_ party will be on this date, and Derek snorts back a laugh when it sounds like Isaac launches himself across the room to wrestle the offender into redacting his statement.

“He’s a little touchy about his dating life,” Derek comments drily.

“You would be too, if you’d peaked at 20,” Stiles says, with a shit-eating little grin.

“Oh?”

“We were sort of a thing last year,” Stiles explains with a non-committal shrug.

Derek’s pretty sure his eyebrows are just about touching his hairline.

“We dated,” Stiles clarifies. “Well. Not dated, exactly, but we fooled around and I mean have you _seen_ him without a shirt on? It was never like, super serious or anything, but it was a, you know, thing.”

Derek doesn’t respond. Isn’t sure how to respond. Really has no idea what the fuck will come out of his mouth if he tries to respond. So, instead, he pulls out his wallet and makes a show of checking to make sure he’s got cash, then changes the subject.  “He’s kind of got a point, though, doesn’t he? The Alphas took you less than a week ago, and we know they’re still in town. Isn’t everyone going out an unnecessary risk?”

Stiles hesitates for just a second at the abrupt topic flip, but covers it well. “Dude, you saw the _Absolutely Do Not Disturb_ sign on Scott’s door. We take Date Night very seriously.”

Derek takes a seat in Stiles’ desk chair. “You said he’s talking to Kira?”

Stiles nods. “Yup. Happens every other week or so – he barricades himself in there and they have marathon Skype sessions. They text and email so much that there’s not much to talk about, though, so they mostly just watch Netflix and have internet sex.”

It’s a tribute to just how much time Derek has spent with Stiles in the last two weeks that he doesn’t even react to the last part of that sentence.

Stiles babbles to fill the silence. “Seriously, though. This stuff matters. When all of this started for us back when Scott got bitten, we did a really shitty job of keeping the non-oh-God-something-supernatural-is-trying-to-kill-us pieces of our lives intact, and it was bad news. If you don’t have something to turn to that’s real, solid, just normal _person_ stuff, you can get pretty…lost.”

There’s a beat in which Stiles seems to notice that he’s been repeatedly touching the tips of his fingers to his right thumb, starting over each time he gets to _ten_.

“So, anyway. We make an effort. Scott and Kira have their Skype time, Ethan and Danny go camping or hiking or ATV-ing or whatever it is they do, Bree goes out with the girls from her sorority, Tink has sleepovers, Cole goes to baseball tournaments, apparently Isaac goes on dates, and I hold down the fort.”

“That doesn’t sound fair to you.” Derek’s phone buzzes against his leg, an alarm reminding him to leave now or he’ll be late to pick Hannah up.

“Broken ribs,” Stiles reminds him, “and drained magical mojo. I’m in no shape to be gettin’ it on with anyone other than the fifth season of _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_. For, you know, reasons. Research reasons.”

“I’m sure,” Derek deadpans, standing and stretching. “I don’t like leaving you here by yourself.”

“The Alpha assholes know where to find me if they want to take another shot, but they saw how easily I can fry their asses now,” Stiles says. Like when he’d explained at the Nemeton, there was no pride in his voice – just stating the facts. “Nah, they’re resting up and planning something dramatic. Lydia’d call if any of us were in real, imminent-death danger. Besides, _my_ Alpha’s home tonight,” he adds, jerking his head towards the wall his bedroom shares with Scott’s, “and I seriously doubt he’d actually let me get killed just so he could watch the rest of this series of _Sherlock_ with Kira.”

Derek can’t really argue with that logic. He’s mostly out the door when Stiles speaks up again.  “Sorry if I surprised you. With the me-and-Isaac thing…thing.  I mean, I’m not sorry, because it’s my life and I’ll date whoever I want and you don’t get to, like, pass judgment or anything, and it’s not like you let on if Ethan and Danny bother you, but since this seemed to bother you or whatever…you seem like a cool guy, but if you’ve got some homophobe thing going on-.”

“Stiles,” Derek interrupts. “I’m pretty sure the fact that I’ve got two ex-boyfriends of my own definitively rules me out of the _homophobe_ category.” He flashes the smile that, he has on good authority, breaks the brains of men and women alike, and heads downstairs.

* * *

 

Isaac doubles over, laughing so hard he can barely suck in the air to plead, “You have to stop. Please, just stop, it’s _embarrassing._ ”

“You’re the one who brought me here!” Natalie protests, struggling to keep a straight face as the next ball comes flying at her and she swings the bat way too early, way too high, and with so much force that she winds up spinning in a complete circle on her heel. The next ball shoots out and she ducks to avoid it, stumbling over to the fence Isaac’s leaning on for support.

“I didn’t think – it was possible – for anyone to be worse – at baseball – than Lydia,” Isaac defends between giant gulps of air.

“You wouldn’t last two minutes on a rugby pitch,” she argues, matching Isaac laugh for laugh. “That’s what we’re doing on our next date!” She crows triumphantly, lacing her fingers between Isaac’s in the fence links.

“Next date, huh?” Isaac parrots. “You think this is going awfully well, don’t you?”

She scoffs. “Please. I’m positively adorable in this ridiculous helmet, of course you’re going to ask me out again. And I’m going to cream you in rugby.”

Isaac lets her out of the batting cage, keeping the link at their fingers and using it to pull her into his arms. “You do look pretty adorable, I’ll give you that.”

“Sorry, excuse me – Miss Lorde?”

Isaac tears his eyes from Natalie’s in annoyance to glare at the polo-shirt-and-visor-wearing guy from the admission desk, who takes a step back but continues to hold out a little red-jacketed book - Natalie’s passport, which she’d presented as ID. “Sorry, but you left this at the desk.”

“ _Merde_ , thanks,” Natalie says gratefully. The boy all but runs away from Isaac’s stare after handing the passport over, and Isaac swipes it from Natalie’s fingers before she can stow it in her bag.

“You’re swearing in French now?” He asks, flipping through the stamped pages. “A woman of international intrigue.”

“Nothing intriguing about it,” she says. She folds herself to the ground and sits in the dirt next to Isaac’s feet, digging a bottle of water out of her bag. “Europe is a smaller place than the States. You go to the Continent, drive an hour in any direction, and you touch three different countries. I can drive for five hours here and still barely leave the state.”

“But you’ve spent time in France,” Isaac says, his fingers lingering over one of the many entry stamps. “More than once.”

She shrugs, a one-shouldered gesture than Isaac finds hopelessly endearing. “We have family there. Everyone has family in France. Now, are you going to feed me on this date, or was it purely an exercise in public humiliation?”

* * *

 

Derek would like to think that he’s pretty damn unflappable. Kids in Shakespearian Lit rewrite half of King Lear to a modern-day language so clunky and inelegant that it makes his eyes bleed? Fine. Stiles drags him to the middle of a state park at 5am to commune with a tree? Fine. Cora sneaks in past curfew, smelling like cheap beer? Okay, not fine, but he can take it in stride and be reasonable, at least.

Kate Argent waltzing into the restaurant where he and Hannah are debating the merits of bananas foster versus tiramisu?

Not fine.

Hannah shrieking with delight and wrapping Kate in a hug?

Really not fucking fine.

“Katie!” Hannah exclaims. “What are you doing here? You didn’t tell me you were coming back!”

“Life takes me where it will, Banana, and I am but a humble citizen of the world,” Kate says, and the words alone are enough to make Derek want to gag. “And who is this fine-looking man you’re with?”

Kate leans on the chair next to Hannah as she gives Derek an exaggerated once-over, and then her eyes flick up to meet his.

To Derek’s credit, he doesn’t immediately have a crippling panic attack, nor does he shift and rip her throat out in front of dozens of witnesses.

But it’s a close thing. 

“Oh, sorry!” Hannah laughs. “Katie, this is Derek Hale, we’ve been dating. And Derek, this is Katie Argent, one of my very best friends from college.”

“We only overlapped at Brown for two years, but we knew we’d be lifelong friends the second we met,” Kate says, beaming, and for a second Derek’s not sure if he’s been knocked into some alternate dimension. The blood rushing past his eardrums is deafening.

“But even after Katie transferred schools, we stayed in touch,” Hannah gushes. “You’re actually the one who got me in touch with the head of the Anthropology department here at Greymar!”

Kate waves a hand dismissively and moves a few steps away from the table. “Old family connections actually do come in handy from time to time.  Anyway, I don’t want to interrupt your date – Hannah, I’ll call you and we’ll get coffee?”

“Absolutely!” Hannah says. “Wait, how long are you in town?”

“Oh, who knows,” Kate says, flashing a blinding smile. “There’s a sort of family reunion thing going on. But I’ll call you! Nice to meet you, Derek.”

She’s gone in the next instant, leaving both Hannah and Derek staring after her – Hannah nostalgic, Derek in shock.

“Katie Argent,” Hannah finally says, shaking her head and taking the last sip of her wine. “What a small world – crazy, isn’t it?”

It takes Derek more than a few tries to get words to come out, feeling like his vocal chords haven’t been used in months. “Y-yeah, crazy. Listen, I’m suddenly not feeling too well – do you mind if we skip dessert and just call it a night?”

 

* * *

 

Summer’s fighting hard to keep autumn from taking a firm hold, so it’s warm enough for Isaac and Natalie to get ice cream and walk hand-in-hand through the park behind Natalie’s building

“Living off-campus as a freshman?” Isaac asks, swinging their interlocked hands in a big circle. “Not common.”

“I live with my dad,” she explains. “We only moved here a few days before the semester started, and I registered late – didn’t have too many options.”

“What’s your dad do?”

Natalie tugs him over to a playground and settles them both in swings. “What’s with the interrogation, Sherlock?”

“You’re interesting,” he says simply. “I want to know more about you.”

She doesn’t immediately respond, instead looking up at the darkening night sky. In the fading light, Isaac notices a dot of rocky road on her cheek, but when he toes his swing towards hers and goes to brush it off, she flinches violently away from his raised hand, jolting herself out of the swing and into the woodchips below in the process. Her scent floods overwhelmingly with fear.

He’s out of his swing and on his knees next to her instantly, hands held up and back in the universal “not armed” stance. “Shit, I – are you okay?”

She blushes a second later, her heartbeat still way too fast. “No, I’m fine, sorry – you startled me, that’s all. Overreaction.”

 _Lie_ , Isaac wants to call. The fear’s still lingering in her scent, pulse unsteady despite the words. He’s working on how to phrase his “If someone’s hurting you, I've been there, I can help” speech when Natalie’s phone emits an insistent little beeping. She hands him her ice cream, pulls the phone from her bag, and her scent skyrockets from fear to a host of much more complicated emotions that Isaac can’t identify.

“I’ve got to go,” she says, scrambling to her feet and brushing woodchips off her butt. “Listen, Isaac, I had a really lovely time. Call me?” She plants a kiss on his cheek and takes off, running toward her building and lifting her phone to her ear, leaving Isaac kneeling beneath the swingset holding melting ice cream cones.

 

* * *

 

“Scott,” Derek growls into Scott’s voicemail as soon as he’s dropped Hannah off, apologizing again for the abrupt end to the evening. “You need to stop ignoring my calls for your precious Kira time right now and _call me back_. Kate’s in town, and from what she said, she’s not the only hunter here – I’m on my way back to the firehouse now, _call me_.”

He ends the call and pulls up Stiles’ number next. He swings the Camaro around a tight curve, and the call connects just in time for him to return his eyes to the road, see the figure standing directly in his path, and let his werewolf reflexes take over. He jerks the wheel hard to the right, sending the car into a spin, and ends up slamming the passenger-side wheels hard against the opposite curb.

He’s dazed by the impact for thirty seconds or so, which gives the person he almost hit enough time to dart over and pull his door open.

“’M okay,” he manages through the haze and the impending whiplash creeping up the right side of his neck. “You ‘kay?”

“Oh, I’m just fine, mate,” the person says, and Derek’s brain is working enough to be surprised by the youth and odd lilt in the words. “This’ll sting a bit. Sorry.”

Derek’s not overly familiar with being drugged, but he recognizes the pinch of a needle in his neck and the weird, slow, heavy feeling that is kanima venom locking down your motor control.

The girl – and it really is just a girl, barely Bree’s age, if Derek had to guess – continues to murmur apologies as she leans over Derek to unsnap his seatbelt and drags him bodily out of the car and onto the sidewalk. He’ll have a few bruises from that alone, but that’s the least of his worries when a car door slams nearby and several sets of feet rush toward them. Paralyzed as he is and lying on his side, all Derek can do is listen and try to figure out how many attackers are involved.

“Well done, Nat, well done!” Older male, same lilt as the girl.

“Let’s just get him off the street,” the girl, Nat, mutters.

“We don’t have a location yet,” reminds another older male, this one with a British accent.

“We should any minute,” says a woman, cutting herself off when a cell phone buzzes. “Ah, speak of the devil. Yes, hello? We’ve got him. 233 Orchard Trail? Got it, cheers.”

“How long will the venom keep him down?” Nat asks, trepidation clear in her voice.

“You did the calculations for the dose,” says a fifth voice, another male.

“He’s bigger than she said! It’s all weight-based, he’s probably burning through it 25% faster than he should.”

“Let’s get a move on, then,” says the British guy. A rough sack is thrust over Derek’s head, his hands and feet are bound, and then there’s a silent 20-minute ride in the trunk of a car.

* * *

 

Stiles bangs on Scott’s door relentlessly until his best friend yanks it open, looking very much like the boxer-and-t-shirt combo was thrown on in the last fifteen seconds and like he’s seriously considering hanging Stiles off the bannister by his shoelaces. Stiles ignores all of this and thrusts his phone, still connected to voicemail, into place at Scott’s ear and manhandles him into holding it there.

“Dude, what the hell,” Scott complains, but Stiles ignores him and pushes into the room.

“Shut up and listen,” Stiles commands, digging through Scott’s unmade bed. Even from a few steps away, the sound of the crash is loud enough that Stiles can hear it. Scott’s eyes widen. “Scott has to go now, Kira,” Stiles says to Kira’s face on the Skype cam, slapping the laptop shut.

“Who is that?” Scott mouths when the girl starts talking.

“I don’t know! I don’t know, Scott, but damn it, dude, you have got to pay more attention to your phone!” He holds up Scott’s offending iPhone like a trophy at first, but the wrinkles creasing his forehead get deeper as he reads the missed call and text notifications.

Derek’s voicemail ends a few seconds later, and a dumbfounded Scott offers Stiles’ Android back.

“It’s hunters,” Stiles says, putting Scott’s voicemail on speaker. “Kate Argent. And she brought friends.”

“What do we do?” He asks. “I mean, we have an address, so we go get him, obviously, but should I call everyone back?”

“Remember what happened the last time you brought in a SWAT team?” Stiles asks, gesturing to his own still-healing black eye. “Let’s go figure out what exactly we’re dealing with. Besides, Lydia still hasn’t called, so…” he trails off as his phone, still in Scott’s outstretched palm, begins to ring. He snatches it up and flips the speaker on without even looking at the caller ID. “Miss Martin. I take it this isn’t a social call.”

 

* * *

 

By the time Derek’s been forced out of the trunk, down a set of stairs, and chained to what feels like a wrought-iron fence, he can move his fingers and toes again. Someone rips the bag off his head and uses rope to bind his forehead back against the fence, too, and as soon as his eyes adjust to the blinding light, he starts assessing the situation. He’s in some sort of abandoned building – looks like a basement – they’d driven 20 minutes west – Ferndale, maybe? He’d heard that a few of the suburbs out west of campus got hit so hard with mudslides last spring that they were still uninhabitable. There are shadowy figures standing behind the massive stadium lights that are pointing at him, so he can’t make them out, but all the scents match up with the ones from the accident.

Well, almost all. One scent – Kate – is seared so strongly into his memory that he doubts he’ll ever be able to smell hibiscus again without choking back vomit.

“Hi there,” she says, stepping forward and angling one of the lights down so that Derek can actually see. “I know I said this at the restaurant, but damn, Derek, you really have grown up nicely.”

 _After you destroyed everything I loved, I took training a little more seriously_.

“Anyway,” Kate continues, “Let’s talk about what I’m doing here. I'm normally not one for monologuing, but our time here is limited and there's a lot that I need you to understand. I know you thought you’d seen the last of me in Maine, but sweetie, you severely underestimated my ability to play the long game.

“Allison – you know about Allison, right? She was my favorite niece. Possibly my favorite family member – so much potential, so much fire inside her. She told me once that she wanted to feel powerful, and we were making her that way. She could have been the finest leader our family had seen in decades. But then she met your new pal, Scott. Chris, my idiot brother, was too softhearted to put a stop to it. Even after Scott’s buddies killed Chris’ wife Victoria, he refused to see the mutts for what they are – irredeemable, uncontrollable killers. So he let Allison keep seeing Scott, and later that rejected-Muppet-looking one, Isaac.

 "If I’d been here,” she says, and her voice breaks a tiny bit. Derek can see the tears glistening in her eyes, and he remembers – how good she is at this. How easy it is to fall for whatever line she’s selling, because she sells it so damn well. “If I’d been here, I could have saved her. But there were other families in need, other wars to win, and I naively believed that Chris could keep her safe. But your new little pack? Your Scott and Stiles and Isaac? They’re the reason she’s dead. Stiles broke, he let the nogitsune in. No one could stop him. And my sweet, strong Allison paid the price.”

Kate’s been stepping closer to him all this time, and now she plants a hand alongside Derek’s chest and leans in, flooding all of his senses with _Kate Kate Kate._ This is every nightmare he’s had for the past three years come to life. He can barely breathe – but he can flex the muscles in his upper arms now. Just a little.

“So you can imagine, being distraught, how I would want to seek vengeance,” Kate purrs into his ear. “I knew I needed to plan long-term, look for a way to hurt McCall and his pack long after they thought they were safe…so I found you.”

Just like that, Derek’s heart stops dead in his chest for three long, painful seconds. His nerve endings are on fire, his brain making the intuitive leap and refusing the outcome dozens of times.

“I needed a way into McCall’s pack, to destroy them from the inside out. We knew about you, even back then – Derek Hale, firstborn son of the Hale Alpha and second, destined to be a great wolf and an even greater Alpha. You were perfect. And you fell so perfectly, Derek, letting me worm my way into your head and heart until you were just helpless little lamb, eager to do whatever I wanted. So I planted Greymar in your head, gave you the idea to pursue a ridiculous degree in a useless field, and you were _almost there_ …but you were never going to leave your pack behind.”

She takes a step back, and Derek sucks in a huge breath of mostly Kate-free air. It doesn’t do much to clear up the panic and rage swirling in his head.

“Honestly, it was probably only a matter of time until we came after your pack anyway. That many wolves in one place? It was a massacre waiting to happen. But I needed you to move, to meet McCall’s pack and to want to join them. And you needed a push out the door to do that. So I laid the trap, watched your entire family walk into it, and set the fire.”

Derek’s world is imploding.

“So that’s it!” Kate says, twirling on one toe and sending up a little cloud of dust. “I killed your family to get you out here, so you could help me take down Scott’s pack from the inside.  Trevor, Clint, let him go.”

Two figures move behind him, unlocking the chains, and he hits his hands and knees on the rough-cut stone floor, muscles still getting re-acquainted with how to control themselves. Kate crouches next to him and threads her fingers through his hair.

“Scott and Stiles have to die,” she says, her voice gentle now. “And there are really only three ways this plays out. One, they surrender themselves to us, here. We’ll conduct our business and leave – the rest of the pack is not our concern. Two, they can resist, in which case we’ll pick the entire pack apart one by one. Three – oh, and Derek, this is by far my favorite option – three is that you can kill them yourself. I can already sense it running through you – you know that your family would still be alive if it weren’t for Scott and Stiles. Get rid of them, and we just might let you keep the pathetic remains of the family you have left.”

She releases his hair and stands up sharply, moving to leave. There’s a general shuffling, like all the others in the room are leaving, too. Derek’s mind is racing, thousands of miles a minute, trapped between flashbacks to the fire and having dinner with the McCall pack, Laura helping him make breakfast for their parents on their anniversary, raking leaves with Bree and Isaac…

Someone clears their throat.

“What is it, Marie?” Kate snaps.

The other woman mutters something, too low for Derek to make out over the howling rage that’s settling deep in his bones.

“Oh, right,” Kate sighs. “Derek! One more condition. Cole and Tiffany Argent are to be surrendered to us immediately, so that they can be properly disposed of, as hunter tradition dictates. Have a wonderful night, lover.”

           


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fallout, explanations, and a plan for war.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YO. ATTENTION. After some stellar input from JjDunn, I'm re-posting this chapter as the original version - the one were Derek doesn't calm down quite so easily. You could probably get away with not re-reading this or the forthcoming Ch7 2.0 since it doesn't actually change the story all that much, but give it a try and let me know what you think. 
> 
> Change made on 25 September. 
> 
> Also, probably a minor blood trigger warning, if that's a thing for you.

The kanima venom wears off.

Derek makes it back to McCall pack lands in a blind rage and is about to cross from the forest to a residential area when his next step suddenly sinks ten inches down into the dirt and _stays_. The rest of his body continues forward and he hears at least one of the bones in his lower leg snap at the inertial conflict, but he barely even feels it – there’s no room in his mostly-wolf brain for anything other than _hate_ and _kill_ and _revenge._

           

“He’s going to kill someone.”

“He’s _not_ going to kill anyone.”

“Dude. Look at him,” Stiles insists, gesturing wildly into the small clearing where Derek, wolfed out to the extreme, is trying to drag his thoroughly broken leg out of one of the quicksand traps Stiles had thrown together when they realized that Derek was _not_ in a good mood. “He’s totally gone.”

“You know what Kate’s like,” Scott says, staring at Derek like he can feel the broken leg. “She could’ve tortured him, made him relive the fire. It’s not his fault.”

“I’m not saying it’s his fault,” Stiles says, trying and failing to sound patient. He loves Scott like a brother, always has and always will, but the guy is so freaking hellbent on only seeing the best in people that he doesn’t even live in the real world half the time. “I’m saying that Lydia-banshee-Martin called us twenty minutes ago, and now we’re looking at full on Murder Wolf.”

“Lydia didn’t say that someone was going to die, just that she had a bad feeling about tonight.”

Stiles doesn’t even dignify that with a response, just a face that clearly shows that he’s had it about to fucking _here_ with Scott’s shit.

“Break the concealment thingy,” Scott says after a tense couple seconds. “I want to talk to him.”

Stiles lets his glare hang for another few breaths, then shifts his stance and runs through the words and motions he needs to kill the temporary concealment spell he’d put up between them and Derek. “You’re an absolute fucking nightmare to work with when you’re all Righteous True Alpha, you know that?”

 

Derek doesn’t get it.

He’s clawed all the dirt away from his leg. He’s staring at his foot, planted ten inches down, completely uncovered, but he can’t…pull…it…out.

Derek doesn’t _get_ it, and he’s getting really fucking pissed off.

And he was _already_ really goddamn pissed off.

He throws back his head and howls in frustration. He has to find the other Alpha and the Emissary, he needs to find them and _kill_ them because they’re the reason, they’re the reason the hunter burned his family alive and everything is flames and memories and emotions that his wolf can’t deal with, _won’t_ deal with again.

The Alpha materializes out of the trees in front of him, making sounds that humans make when they’re too pathetic and weak to fight, and Derek doesn’t care if he has to chew his own leg off to get out of this pit – he is going to rip Scott McCall’s throat out with his teeth.

 

“I told you,” Stiles says, watching Derek go absolutely fucking nuts when Scott steps out from behind the fading concealment. “He’s going to kill someone. You, it looks like. Probably both of us. This is how we die. I didn’t think it would actually be werewolves that got me in the end, you know? For you, maybe, but I figured some warlock or vampire or something more exotic would do me in.”

“You’re not helping, Stiles.”

“Hey, I’ve still got him trapped, don’t I?”

 

Blood.

Blood in the air, blood on his claws, blood on the ground – that’s what he wants.

His pack died without blood. No blood in the flames, oh no, just charred flesh and screams and then death. Death and tearing within him as they died, and the pack got smaller and smaller and they are weak, a pack of three is _weak_ and his Alpha wasn’t even strong, couldn’t lead the pack.

 _He_ should be the Alpha.

 

“Scott,” Stiles says slowly, something starting to dawn on him as his breath begins to hitch in his chest. “You know how I told you that my magic only works if I’ve got the strength to maintain it?”

“Is now really the time for a magical theory lesson, Stiles?”

“It’s the right goddamn time,” Stiles snaps. “Because it’s Derek’s strength against mine, and I’m not exactly at 100%.”

Scott’s eyes flick back to him, gears turning. “How long do we have?”

Stiles lowers himself carefully to the ground, trying to settle his breathing. Now is _really_ not the time for a panic attack. “Not long enough. I can siphon from some of the other long-term stuff I’ve got running, but unless Derek wears himself out real soon, we’re in trouble.”

“Can you take energy from me?”

“No, Scott, we’ve had this conversation at least ten times and the answer hasn’t changed –“

“Okay, okay, just checking. How long until Argent gets here? You called him, right?”

Stiles checks the time on his phone, mentally assessing which of his maintenance spells he can take down without doing permanent damage. “Of course I did, asshole, Chris Argent is always the first call when Kate shows up. He’s still at least ten minutes out, we’re just lucky he was already on his way up to help with Deucalion.”

“I should call for backup,” Scott says, and the last thing Stiles registers seeing before he closes his eyes to focus entirely on maintaining the quicksand trap is Scott’s eyes flashing red in the deepening dusk.

 

Yes. Yes. It makes sense.

He should be the Alpha. He would be strong and swift. He would protect this new pack, wouldn’t let them be burned, would lead them against the hunters in battle and they would win.

This other Alpha stands before him and howls. Derek listens, and this Alpha calls to him in a way no other Alpha has, but he knows what he has to do.

 

“Derek,” Scott says, layering his voice with enough True Alpha that even Stiles can hear it through his haze of concurrent spells. “Derek, you need to calm down.”

 

Blood.

Pack.

Family.

Revenge.

           

There is a noise. There is a tearing.

He is free.

 

He launches himself at the Alpha using three functioning limbs and is gratified when his enemy roars and commits to the fight. The Alpha throws him off, but he recovers quickly and finds an opening, sinking his teeth into the flank and reveling in the feeling of blood running across his jaw. He releases and circles, assessing, looking for the next weakness.

This is redemption. This is vengeance for his old pack, and hope for the new pack he will inherit when he pulls this Alpha’s guts out through his skin.

He lunges; the Alpha counters. He feints and the Alpha just barely doesn’t fall for it, but it brings them close together and he gets claws sharp across his back, tiny insignificant lines of fire that bring his family’s suffering back to the surface and then he locks jaws around his enemy’s foreleg, grinds down until it snaps.

The odds are even, now.  Three legs for them both.

On his next pass around the clearing, another scent catches his attention – the Emissary. He lies in the dirt. Unmoving. Unseeing.

The blood on his tongue and the fire on his back remind him. This one – this human, with his tricks and his sorcery – just as responsible for his pack’s death as the Alpha. This one must also die.

He springs forward and sets his teeth deep into the Emissary’s weakest point.

 

Stiles comes out of the darkness to blinding, searing pain all across his shoulder and the right side of his neck. Some miniscule part of his brain tells him that this isn’t as bad as that time at the Baltic Sea, but he’s beyond comparing war wounds.

He probably screams before the darkness sucks him back in. He’s not sure.

 

The Alpha, howling his rage, is still halfway across the clearing.

A new scent, familiar but different, distracts him and he releases the bleeding Emissary. A sharp double-sound in the trees behind him makes him pivot, but he barely has time to see the human – _hunter_ – before the metal weapon explodes.

* * *

 

When Derek comes to, his entire torso is a mess of dull burning sensation and he can’t move his limbs. He groans something unintelligible, and a hazy figure above him snorts.

“Might as well keep quiet and still,” the figure says, and Derek’s still re-booting brain can’t assign the voice to anyone he knows. “I need to get the rest of the buckshot out of you, and Danny tells me those restraints are mountain ash reinforced with silver-laced carbonite.”

Despite the warning, Derek grunts again when a patch of his chest near his shoulder erupts into flames for a few seconds.

His family.

The rage and hatred and wolf come rushing back in, but it’s like they’re behind a curtain, or in another room.

Something clatters nearby.

“Eight or nine more of these. Scott’s got a strong sedative circulating your system, which is why you’re groggy. Still can’t believe that bozo’s legitimately going to be a vet.”

Derek’s vision clears slowly, until he can track the movements of the salt-and-pepper man who must have nailed him in the chest with wolfsbane-laced buckshot. There’s something familiar about him, around the eyes and the set of his jaw.  Clearly a hunter. The man methodically sterilizes a pair of medical tweezers, digs them under Derek’s skin, extracts a piece of metal, stuffs a pinch of sizzling wolfsbane into the hole, and repeats the entire process. Derek groans in alternating cycles of pain and relief at the flame and resultant healing.

“You’ve been babbling on and off since I shot you, and Scott said you were shouting in the woods before it got bad,” the man says after a few minutes of silence. “You need to know that what you said isn’t true. I don’t know what Kate told you, but I know the story of what happened to your family, and what you said isn’t true on two counts – that your family died because Allison died, and that Scott and Stiles are the reason she did.”

He pulls the last piece of buckshot out of Derek, drops the tweezers onto a tray, and collapses into a chair next to the table Derek’s strapped to. For the first time, Derek is cognizant enough to take stock of his surroundings – looks like the firehouse’s basement. For now, the restraints are too strong and he is too weak – but he will heal. And he’s close to the Alpha and the Emissary. He can still get his revenge.

The man is silent for another space, and when he speaks, it’s in short, disconnected phrases. “What Kate did to your family? It wasn’t right. We had a code. A different one than the one we —  _I_ —have now. Your family didn’t harm anyone, not when it could be avoided. She had no right.  But it wasn’t – it wasn’t about Allison. Not really. Kate has a fire in her, an all-consuming hatred, and she used Allison’s death as justification for that. She was always going to do something terrible. She hates werewolves just because they’re werewolves, and your family was a tempting target. Allison was just a catalyst.”

He stands, moves to a sink bolted roughly into the stone-hewn wall, washes his hands. Derek’s feeling a little more alert now, and he’s finally able to piece together the details about this man – the eyes, the jaw, the ramrod-straight posture, the story, the way he moves – and make the intuitive leap that this is also an Argent. He’s an Argent, and he’s standing here refuting Kate’s actions and arguments, trying to convince him not to kill the Alpha and the Emissary and _holy mother of goddamn fucking shit, I tried to kill Scott and Stiles._

“As for Scott and Stiles being responsible for Allison’s death,” the man continues, turning back to Derek with eyes glinting like metal in the dim fluorescent lighting, “My daughter died a warrior’s death. She was fighting to save her friends, out of love and loyalty and strength, and those were  _her_  choices.  She fought because she wanted to, because she couldn’t  _not_  fight, and she gave everything she had to save the people she loved. If I ever hear you disrespecting her memory by implying that the actions of two teenage boys were more important than the choices she made, I’ll gut you myself and you can take up the conversation with Allison in person.”

He jams the plunger down on a syringe inserted into an IV Derek hadn’t noticed before, and a warm tingling spreads down Derek’s left arm.

 

* * *

 

The next time Derek surfaces, he’s lying in one of the firehouse’s spare bedrooms under a plaid green-and-black comforter. His chest, pleasantly, isn’t on fire anymore, although when he goes to crack his back by stretching both arms overhead, he’s brought up short by a restraint around one wrist that’s deadbolted deep into the wall.

“Welcome back, Sourwolf,” a voice says, and Derek cranes his neck around to see Stiles standing in the doorway, hazardously balancing two mugs in one hand by pressing them against his right arm, which is fastened against his chest in a sling.

Because Derek bit him.

Because Derek tried to kill him.

Because Kate took him and lied to him and told him that Scott and Stiles were the reason she set the Hale house on fire.

“Still feeling murderous, or can I give you this without you biting my hand off?”

Derek holds out his non-shackled hand automatically and takes a pull of the proffered coffee, which contains exactly the right amount of milk. Stiles folds himself into armchair next to Derek’s bed and sips at his own mug. They caffeinate in silence for several minutes, and Derek catalogs the flood of emotions that come rushing in as he replays the Friday’s events: surprise, anxiety, pain, rage – _god, so much rage._

“What time is it?” Derek finally asks.

“Just past eight,” Stiles says. “Saturday morning,” he adds after a second, answering Derek’s unasked question. “We decided it would be best if we let you sleep it off.”

Derek nods, letting the steam from the coffee overtake his senses for a second.

It’s quiet again. Then,

“You look like shit, you know,” Stiles says, hiding his grin behind the mug.

“You’re one to talk,” Derek retaliates, instantly assessing the dark bags under Stiles’ eyes, splashed in stark contrast to the rest of his unnaturally pale skin. It’s purely instinct to banter with Stiles, so he says, “I got shot – what’s your excuse?” without really thinking.

Stiles heaves a dramatic sigh. “Redirecting energy from long-term maintenance spells into a single short-term spell isn’t as easy at it sounds. Oh, and then you tried to rip my throat out.” 

A lump forms in Derek’s chest. “About last night --.”

“Are you good?” Stiles interrupts.

Derek stares. “What?”

“Chris told me he talked to you. Explained his side of things. So I’m asking if you’re good, or if you’re going to try to kill me – or Scott – again.”

“I’m…uh. I’m good. I think.”

“Happy Saturday!” Scott announces, breezing into the room, leaning up against Stiles’ chair and stealing Stiles’ coffee (and earning a squawk of outrage). “Ugh, dude, too much sugar.”

“Get – your – own – then,” Stiles retorts, punctuating each word with a flap of his arm against Scott’s chest until the Alpha returns the mug to its rightful owner.

Derek watches the exchange cautiously, torn between amusement and distress and completely unable to process his warring emotions or all the information that’s been thrown at him. “But I could have – I mean, I wanted to – I almost --.”

“Spit it out, Derek,” Isaac interrupts. He bypasses the still-squabbling Alpha and Emissary and takes a seat at the foot of Derek’s bed.

Derek takes a deep breath and marshals his thoughts into actual sentences – he’s an English professor, for Christ’s sake – and tries again. “I didn’t know about Allison. And everything Kate said took me by surprise. I’m sorry for…making a scene. And trying to kill you.”

Stiles waves a nonchalant hand in his direction. “We’ve legitimately all tried to kill each other before. Scott nearly ate me when he first turned, Isaac here was a proper douchebag for a solid six months, Jackson spent a few weeks as a lizard king, Ethan was one of the Alpha pack when we met, Lydia poisoned everyone at a party, Malia also tried to eat me, actually, that’s probably a disturbing pattern to look into later, and I – you know – Nogitsune, dark magic, etcetera.  So Danny and Bree and Kira are the only innocents in all of this, which makes sense because they basically fart rainbows and sunshine.”

“I heard that,” Bree drawls, poking her head around the doorframe. “And will use it in my defense the next time you accuse me of excessive flatulence after Taco Night. Who’s up for breakfast? Me, Danny, and Cole are making pancakes.”

“We’ll be down in a sec,” Stiles says, pulling a key from his pocket and jerking his chin towards Derek’s handcuff. Scott scoops Stiles’ coffee again his way out the door and says something about pack training after breakfast to Isaac, who nods and follows close behind.  He shuts the door on his way out.

“Stiles,” Derek begins, not sure where he’s going to take that sentence and saved from having to figure it out by a leveling stare.

“I have three things to say to you,” Stiles says. “One as your friend, one as the McCall Pack Emissary, and one as me. You’re going to sit there and listen, and based on how you react, I’ll either let you go or I’ll turn your furry ass over to Deucalion. Got it?”

Derek nods.

“Good. One. As your friend. You’re going through some seriously tough shit, and after everything that happened last night…I’m sorry.” Stiles’ face softens as he says this. “I lost my mom when I was young, my dad a few years back, and at this point I’ve probably got just as many friends who are dead as those who are alive. Life just fucking sucks sometimes, and I’m genuinely sorry that you got dealt a shitty hand. If you ever need someone to talk to about it, I’m here.

“Two. As the McCall Pack Emissary.” Stiles looks down at his hand and fidgets a little. “We didn’t know. About Kate. I mean, we knew what she did to your family, but we didn’t know why. Or we didn’t know the twisted reasoning that got her to that point. At any rate, from the McCall pack to the Hale pack, we’re sorry for whatever role we may have played.

“And three. From me.” Stiles locks eyes with Derek on this and seems to age ten years. “What I said a minute ago, about all of us having tried to kill each other at some point – it’s true. But you get one pass, Derek. One. And this was yours. And you are goddamn lucky it was me and not any of the others, because if you had pulled that shit and gotten that close with _anyone_ else, I’d have…”

Stiles seems to realize that he’s shaking, that fingernails of his left hand are pressing so hard into his palm that he’s bleeding, that the temperature in the room has dropped ten degrees.  He sits back in the chair, unfurls his fist, and finishes with an even tone.

“Point three is that if you so much as look at a member of this pack with malice again, I’ll kill you,” he says simply. “I could list specific threats and paint you a colorful picture, but you’ve seen me at the Nemeton.”

He maintains steady eye contact with Derek through the space of several breaths. Derek nods slowly, making his intentions clear.

“I understand.”

“Good.” Stiles stands and leans up over Derek to fit the key into the restraint, struggling with it a little due to the awkwardness of his sling, and Derek does his very, very best not to notice the tempting lines of tattoo spiraling down into the man’s jeans that get revealed as Stiles’ shirt rides up a little with the stretch.

The lock pops open and Stiles steps back, watches Derek sit up and rub circulation back into his hand.

“Are you…are you going to turn?” Derek asks when his fingers aren’t numb anymore. “Because of the bite?”

Stiles snorts. “You honestly think you’re the first werebeastie to bite me? You’re actually sixth on that list, and since two of your predecessors were Alphas and their bites packed more punch and I’m still standing here fang-less, it’s safe to say that no, I won’t turn. You did crack my collarbone, though, so jackass points to you.”

“I’m sorry,” Derek says automatically, testing his balance cautiously when he stands, pleasantly surprised that someone set his leg properly when he was out so it’s healed straight.

Stiles shrugs, then appears to immediately regret the action when it jostles his shoulder. “ _Fuck_. I was going to say ‘no problem,’ but then that happened. Nemeton’ll heal me right up the next time I stop by. That was Chris Argent, by the way,” he offers when they make it to the stairs. “Allison’s dad, Gerard’s son.”

“Kate’s brother,” Derek addends, taking the stairs slowly. “If he doesn’t blame you for Allison’s death, why does Kate?”

“Because Kate is a two-faced, manipulative sociopath?” Danny offers from the kitchen as they pass through.

Stiles high-fives the other human, snags a bowl of fruit from the fridge, and deposits it on the kitchen table. Derek settles into a chair across from Tink, who squints up at him and eats a blackberry with more aggression than he would’ve thought possible.

“She’s more like six-faced, really,” Stiles says, returning with a handful of forks and distributing them wildly. “One side is Dutiful Hunter, one is Beautiful Woman, and four are Heinous Bitch. Oh hey, Chris, how’s it going?”

Derek looks up in time to catch Chris Argent, his shooter and subsequent healer, rolling his eyes. “Good morning, Stiles.” He looks across the table and makes eye contact with Derek, giving a sharp nod. “Derek.”

Derek has a brief internal battle, returning the nod with an equally curt, “Chris.”

“Good thing  _that_  makes for a comfortable pancake-eating atmosphere,” Stiles deadpans, plunking himself into the seat next to Derek. “Are we ready to eat? I’m starving.”

Within minutes, the entire pack is seated and enthusiastically eating their weight in a variety of pancakes, and Derek’s having another one of those  _Derek Hale, this is your life_  moments. Twelve hours after being abducted by Kate Argent and having his world turned upside down, he’s eating breakfast with another pack, two of which are Argents-turned-werewolves, one of which is frighteningly powerful mage of some sort, and Kate Argent’s fucking  _brother_ , and instead of feeling anxious or out of place or aggressive, he just feels…home.

 _if only Cora were here_.  

 

* * *

 

Stiles hums happily to himself several sweaty, exhausting hours later, wiggling a little to the music in his head and ignoring the twinges of pain radiating out from his collarbone as he pulls bags of marinated chicken out of the fridge. He was the first out the shower post-training session, so he’s taking it upon himself to start prepping the pack’s early afternoon lunch before everyone breaks off into separate real-life activities. Even without wolfy supersenses, he can hear most of the pack stomping around upstairs, save Scott and Chris, who are still sparring in the backyard as they wait for the showers to free up.

It’s odd, really, how content he feels. They’ve got the Alpha pack to deal with again, and that alone is enough to start the gears in his stomach churning, sending little jets of furious, demanding energy through his veins, but throw in some sort of Argent family get-together? He should be on high alert. He should be preparing for war. He really needs to get to the Nemeton again sometime soon. Especially after the fiasco with Derek last night – he needs a functioning right arm again, pronto.

His phone buzzes on the counter, knocking him out of his head. With thumbs and fingers occupied by barbecue sauce, he taps in his passcode with his nose – only messing it up once,  _nice_  – swipes to answer the call, and gives one more tap to put it on speaker.

“This is Stiles.”

“Stiles, hi!” A voice chirps. “It’s Gwen.”

“Gwen!” Stiles quickly wipes his hand on a towel, clicks his headphones into the phone, and pockets the device so he can keep working while talking. “How’s my very  _fae_ -vorite person doing? See what I did there?”

Stiles can practically hear Gwen rolling her eyes through the phone. “Your brilliance knows no bounds.”

"It’s a gift, really.” He squats, searching through a low cupboard for a cutting board. “What’s up?”

“What are you doing next weekend?”

“My answer prior to this phone call would have been ‘nothing,’ but now I’m wondering if I should change that to avoid you calling in some sort of favor. Which, actually, don’t you currently owe  _me_  a favor? Or, like, five?”

Gwen laughs a bright little tinkle. “It’s not a favor so much as it’s a date. Well, a date-slash-favor.”

Stiles straightens up, clutching a cutting board overheard victoriously. Chris and Scott, drenched in sweat, come in from outside, and he pantomimes being on the phone before he remembers that he actually  _is_  on the phone, gestures to the bulge in his pocket, then smacks himself on the forehead with the cutting board at the looks on Scott’s and Chris’s face. “You’re going to have to give me more to go on, G.”

“I got invited to a Fae wedding.”

“You  _what_? Way to bury the lead!” Stiles takes up chopping zucchini – remarkably challenging with only one hand – while Chris and Scott grab glasses of water and sit at the counter’s barstools, talking to each other quietly.

“I swear, it’s like now that they found out I’m half-Fae, the local Realms need to include me in all their ridiculous parties. Did I tell you I went to a naming ceremony two months ago that lasted six days?  _Ridiculous_. Anyway, I was going to take Jenna --.”

“You were going to take a  _werewolf_ to a  _Fae wedding_?” Stiles parrots, and  _that_ certainly gets Scott’s and Chris’s attention, but he ignores them and chops harder.

“Yeah, yeah, that reaction exactly is why I’m calling. I need a date, and you’re still friendly with the Culwierl Realm, right?”

“Yes,” Stiles hedges, drawing out the vowel sound.  “I helped them with that kewpie issue – what, last year?”

“Year and a half,” Gwen corrects. “It’s when we met. Right after you got back from Russia.”

Stiles grins a little as the details of that trip start to trickle back in. Friends he’d made during his almost-year abroad studying magic and some darker arts had mentioned him to counterparts in the US, and since then he’d developed a substantial reputation amongst the supernatural crowd as an investigator/fixer/jack-of-all-trades/Olivia Pope. The Culwierl Fae Realm, an hour north of Seattle, had been one of his first trips, and resulted in a burgeoning lifelong friendship with Gwen Harrison, the half-Fae Emissary-in-training to the Ritter pack.

 “Right you are. Look, Gwen, I’d love to help out and party with a bunch of Fae until my liver gives out and I get talked into staying in a Mound for all eternity, but there’s…kind of a lot going on here at the moment.”

Stiles may have only spent a total of eight days with Gwen in the entire 17 months they’ve known each other, but at the mention of trouble he can picture her sitting up straighter, fixing one of her brightly-colored beanies over her ropes of insanely curly, Fae-descendant blonde hair ( _“I cut it_ last night _,” she’d wailed over the phone, “It was above my shoulders_ last night _and now it’s already at my ribs again!”_ ), and starting to take notes. “Yeah? What’s happening?”

Stiles looks back and forth between Chris and Scott, who are clearly waiting for him to get off the phone so they can discuss something. “Actually…when’s the wedding, exactly?”

“Week from yesterday – Friday, the 13th.”

This time, Stiles rolls his eyes. “Of  _course_  it’s on Friday the 13th. Anyway – if I agree to this, could I borrow you for the rest of the weekend? And possibly the entire next week? Maybe longer? How much time off will your boss give you?”

Gwen hums into the phone. At 18, she’s taking a gap year before college to intern at a wildlife preserve (which gave Stiles endless joke ammo). “I’ve got some vacation time saved up, and can keep up with anything I need to from my laptop. I’ll have to clear it with my Alpha, but she still owes you from the thing with the air demon, so it’ll probably be okay.”

“Awesome,” Stiles says in a sigh of relief, and the bubble of tension in his chest he’s been studiously ignoring lightens up just a little. “I’ll post some of the details to that site Danny set up – you remember how to get in?”

“I’ll just hack it if I can’t.”

“Don’t ever say that to Danny.”

“If Danny can’t handle one girl with no formal programmer training, he doesn’t have any business coding your private site and you should outsource that work to a particularly cute Google-fu ninja who accepts payment entirely in frozen yogurt. That’s me, by the way.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll text you when the site’s updated and drive up after class on Friday – I’ll be at your place by 6.”

“Sounds good! See you Friday.”

Stiles whips his head around until he can trap the headphone wire under his chin and uses it to tug the buds out of his ear, leaving them to dangle from his pocket. “What’s up, guys?”

“Fae wedding?”

“Werewolf at a Fae wedding?”

Stiles waves a hand dismissively and sends slivers of zucchini flying through the air. “It’s handled. And now I’ll have backup next week, so that’s good for everyone.”

“Gwen’s coming down?” Scott says, visibly brightening. “Awesome!”

“Tell me who Gwen is later,” Chris says. “We need to talk about Kate.”

Footsteps stop at the entry to the kitchen, where a freshly-showered Derek is looking sheepish and shifting his weight from foot to foot. “Er, sorry. I can come back?”

“You should probably stay,” Isaac says, announcing his presence with a clap to Derek’s shoulder as he breezes past. He pulls out the stool next to Scott and grabs a handful of sliced zucchini to munch on. “We need to know what she told you.”

Derek looks furtively around the room, connecting with first Scott, then Chris, and finally Stiles, like he’s making sure everyone is okay with his presence. Stiles decides to take pity on him – he did well during the training session, almost killed a guy last night, and handled Stiles threatening his life without freaking out too visibly. Stiles is willing to overlook the fact that _he’s_ the guy Derek almost killed – he hasn’t gone more than 67 days without a near-death experience since Scott started sprouting fur out of his cheeks, so it’s really just commonplace at this point. “Here, big guy – make yourself useful while you talk. Chop up the lettuce and tomatoes and carrots and stuff for the salad.”

Derek takes the vegetables shoved into his arms with something like relief on his face and settles into a steady chopping rhythm. Stiles drags his eyes away from watching the muscles in Derek’s forearms flex – because hey, nothing says “emotionally stable” like sexually objectifying your would-be killer less than twelve hours after the would-be killing – to toss the zucchini with a bit of olive oil and pepper. “She didn’t say much, honestly,” Derek says once settled. “In the restaurant she said that there was a ‘family reunion’ happening, and that’s what I called Scott about.”

Chris nods.  “I don’t exactly get family newsletters anymore, but I heard about it.  Your pack’s been doing pretty well at staying under the radar and within the code, Scott, but having the Alpha Pack around again lit this place up like a beacon on the hunter watchboards.”

Stiles narrows an eye at him. “A  _beacon_? Really? As if we hadn’t had enough of that word to last a lifetime? Two lifetimes?”

"Do we know who’s here?” Scott asks.

“Not definitively, besides Kate,” Chris says. “And Gerard.”

"Gerard?” Isaac repeats with a raised eyebrow. “ _Gerard_  Gerard? Your father?”

“How many other Gerards can you possibly know?” Stiles snipes.

“There were other names,” Derek interrupts quietly. “Trevor. Clint, I think? There were at least five voices at the accident. Someone was British.”

“Oh, someone was British!” Stiles chimes in.  “That’s only, what, 64 million people to search through? Helpful.”

“Stiles,” Chris says patiently, “Shut up.  There aren’t that many British hunting families, and even fewer branches of the Argents there. Given what’s going on, I’d bet that Marie and Louis are here. Cole and Tink’s parents.”

A distressed squeak puts an immediate pause in the conversation as five heads whip toward the door, where Tink has wide, panicked eyes. Stiles moves to go to her, but Isaac is closer and gets there in half a second, wrapping her in a big hug, pressing her face against his shoulder and letting her scent-mark him freely. “It’ll be okay, Tink. We’re just talking a few things out – can you head back upstairs until we call everyone down? Danny should be out of the shower by now, maybe he can help you with your physics homework.”

Tink nods miserably and takes two steps out of the room, then flings herself into Scott’s arms for a quick hug. She visibly relaxes at her Alpha’s touch, and the teeny tiny part of Stiles that is sometimes jealous of the wolves and their whole tactile, sense-sharing thing flares up for the space of a single breath. Then Tink disappears upstairs again.

“Okay,” Scott says, turning back to the counter. “So Kate, Gerard, probably Marie and Louis. Who else?”

“You said Clint?” Chris muses. “Could be Clinton Lorde, from one of the Irish families.  It’s been a long time since I’ve known the lineages by heart – we only have to study them for initiation. Actually, Cole might be able to help us here, since he would have been studying right before the…accident.”

“Let’s keep him out of it until we don’t have any other options,” Stiles says, sharing a look with Isaac. “No point worrying him if we don’t need to. Let’s ask Danny to check the eBeast, and we can have Lydia look, too – maybe there’s a family tree in one of the old Argent books.”

“The eBeast?” Derek echoes quietly, not looking up from his tomatoes.

“Danny and Lyds spent most of freshman year compiling everything we could translate from the couple bestiaries we could get our hands on, cross-checking, and putting it online,” Stiles explains, putting his used cutting board in the sink and running water over it. “It’s cataloged and search-able, because Danny is a computer wizard, and since then we’ve been adding to it from research and personal experience. It’s up on a private, specially-encrypted website that only we know how to access – well, us and a few trusted friends. We call it the eBeast.”

Derek raises an eyebrow at Scott. “And you were surprised that there’s a werewolf community Facebook page?”

Stiles gapes at him. “I thought that was all  _Twilight_  nuts!”

“Boys,” Chris sighs. “Focus. Four unfriendly hunters in town, probably three unknowns, possibly more already here or on the way. Derek, did they say what they wanted?”

Derek’s knife goes clean through the cutting board and glances off the Formica beneath.  “She has two…demands,” he growls. “Scott and Stiles dead, and Cole and Tink handed over.”

“Well, obviously neither of those is happening,” Stiles snorts. “Despite our dear Derek’s best efforts last night. I mean, honestly, it’s like she’s never dealt with us before.”

“So what do we do?” Isaac says sharply, interrupting Stiles’ derisive musings. “Hunters on one side, the Alphas on the other. We’re pretty seriously outnumbered here.”

The kitchen falls silent, save the sounds of Derek sweeping the broken cutting board into the trash, fetching a new one, and taking up chopping again. Stiles is pretty sure the tomatoes could be used as salsa now.

“We need more intel,” Chris says. “Scott, you said you know where the Alphas are staying – Danny can set up surveillance cameras. Monitor their movements. Try to figure out their plans. Derek, if you can remember where Kate took you, we can stake that place out as well.”

“We should set up protection,” Scott adds. “Buddy system until further notice. Cole and Tink don’t go anywhere without one of the five of us. Everyone home by 10. Stiles, you should re-spell all the wards, and Gwen can help when she gets here.”

“Step up our training regimen, too,” Isaac tags on quietly.

There’s another small bout of silence, and Stiles knows they’re waiting for his input. Whenever they’re in a situation like this, this is always what it comes down to – the three of them: Alpha, Hunter, and Emissary, standing around a table. Ideas flick rapidly through his head – war tactics he read about in Novosibirsk, strategies he picked up in Azador, offensive strikes he learned at a terrible cost in Barsakelmes. This is his role in the three-pronged leadership machine that is McCall Pack & Co. – the Alpha protects, the Hunter watches, and the Emissary attacks.

 “We rally the troops,” he says finally, having run through his ideal plans in his head and already hand-picking the additional acquaintances they’re going to need to bring in to pull them off. “Alphas, Hunters, and midterms – the ultimate trifecta. I’d say it’s justified. Gwen’s already coming down, but I’ll see if Sheila can spare anyone else. The Culwierl Realm may help, if the wedding doesn’t go too long, and the Dolili Realm owes me one, too. I should call Makfa, and June, and Roderick.” He trails off, thinking he should be making a list, when his phone buzzes as if on cue and he fumbles it out of his pocket.  He reads the text, then flips to a notepad app and starts typing while still thinking out loud. “Lydia says she and Malia will be here on the 19th. It’s probably too far and too soon for Kira to come back, but Jackson might pop over if Lydia asks. I’ll contact Rasho when I stop at the Nemeton on my way to the wedding.”

He looks up from his phone, temporarily out of ideas, and makes eye contact with everyone in the room, still flipping through battle plans in his head. Scott looks unsurprised – he’s well used to this version of Stiles. Chris appears mildly impressed, but like he’s come to expect this out of the spazzy best friend of his daughter’s ex-boyfriend. Isaac is aloof and unconcerned, although the tension between his eyes gives him away. And Derek…Derek is looking at Stiles like he’s a beam of brilliant light, but he blinks and it’s gone – Sourwolf is shuttered once again.

He files all of it away, compartmentalizing until only what is useful remains. Because this is always what it comes down to, and more specifically, this is always what  _he_  comes down to. He’s not a wolf, coyote, kitsune, banshee, or hunter, but there’s a darkness and a power tied deep into the core of his being, and no amount of sarcasm or flailing can hide the fact that when he goes to war, he doesn’t just play to win – he plays to make sure the other side can never play again.  _Ever_. There’s a reason that even the threat of calling him in is enough to put an end to conflict in certain supernatural circles.

A single shiver travels down his spine and lodges in that place that sends spirals of cold, shadowy energy into his limbs as he remembers the destruction he’s wreaked.

He is Stiles Stilinski, and he’s getting ready to go to war. 

        

* * *

 

Isaac watches Derek carefully as Stiles sails out of the room to the patio to turn on the grill, talking over his shoulder about having no idea what one is supposed to wear to a Fae wedding. Isaac knows from first-hand experience how off-putting it can be the first (and second, and fifteenth) time you see Stiles do this - switch parts of himself on and off at will. One second, he’s cracking jokes about  _Twilight_. Next, he’s single-mindedly making a list of the allies he can call in, some of them serious heavyweights, allegiances he’s earned by putting his life on the line time and time again. In the following breath, he’s debating the pros and cons of cummerbunds with himself while he layers chicken on the grill.

Scott heaves a sigh and levers himself out of his chair, heading toward the living room to call the rest of the pack down. Chris gets out his cell phone, says that he has a few business calls to make, and closes himself in the study. Isaac circles around next to Derek and helps him transfer the incredibly thoroughly chopped salad ingredients into a bowl.

“Is he…okay?” Derek asks quietly, gesturing out the window to where Stiles is hopping back and forth between bare feet, now talking to himself about boutonnieres. 

“You did try to kill him last night,” Isaac says. “Cut the guy some slack.”

Derek looks at him sharply. “You know?”

Isaac shrugs. “I’m Scott’s second.”

Derek nods, stress rolling through his shoulders.

Isaac sighs. “He still hasn’t told you about our senior year of high school, has he? And Scott hasn’t either.”

Derek shakes his head. “No. Not really. I know that’s when the Alpha pack came back for the first time, a lot of people died, and Stiles’ magical… _whatever_ got triggered, but Scott just said that it’s Stiles’ story to tell, and that he’ll tell me when – if – he’s ready.”

“That’s probably fair.” Isaac chews on a thumbnail, watches his Emissary chatter to himself, apparently desperate to keep his mind from spinning off into something else. Isaac’s seen this before – only this bad once or twice, though. So long as Stiles keeps talking and doesn’t get derailed, he’ll be okay. “Look, I’ll give you the bullet points, but only because I think you’ll need them to get through the next few weeks without causing harm or asking stupid questions. Details come from Stiles and Stiles only, and  _you don’t ask_  – like Scott said, he’ll tell you if he’s ready. If you earn it. Got it?”

Derek nods mutely.

“The Alphas came for the first time junior year, and it was bad. We got Ethan and his twin brother, Aiden, out of it, but two of our pack, Boyd and Erica, were killed, along with a bunch of other people in Beacon Hills. All because Deucalion wanted Scott to join his pack, and because a dark druid who wanted revenge against Deucalion chose Beacon Hills as the battleground.  We won, but it cost us a lot to get there – including Scott, Stiles, and Allison essentially sacrificing themselves to save their parents. 

“Deaton always says that the sacrifice at the Nemeton opened a door in each of their minds, and that’s how the nogitsune got to Stiles. That was a rough few weeks, and it’s how we lost Aiden and Allison. And others.

“We were… _fragile._ After that. We rebuilt a little during the summer, found Malia, healed, but we were all still just kids. Stiles especially had it bad. The guilt of everything that happened with the nogitsune was the worst for him.  So when the Alphas came back at the start of senior year – more members, more crazy, more killing, more desire for Scott to join them now that they knew he’s a True Alpha – he took it hardest. And then Deucalion had Stiles kidnapped, tortured for two weeks, and – and killed his father in front of him.”

Derek snaps the spatula he’d been holding in half. Isaac gently extricates the pieces from his claws. “It broke something in Stiles. Deaton couldn’t explain it, no one could, but suddenly Stiles could access something big and powerful and beyond comprehension, and we were all gearing up to have this epic battle when suddenly half the valley just  _exploded_ , and almost the entire Alpha Pack was dead, and the few alive limped away. 

“You have to understand,” Isaac rushes, feeling the need to defend the next part even though Derek shows no sign of judgment. “After that happened, we were all so relieved, so happy it was over and that no one else had to die, that we didn’t even notice how far gone Stiles was. He fell into this spiral of darkness and magic and no one we knew, no one  _Deaton_  knew, could help, and then one day he just…disappeared.”

Derek’s eyes and ears flick up, and Isaac hears what he hears – Scott leading the rest of the pack to the patio the long way, probably giving him time to finish the explanation. He lowers his voice and hurries to the end.  “We still don’t actually know what happened.  We didn’t hear from him for months, and then he emailed Scott to say that he’d gotten his GED online and submitted his application to Greymar, starting with a semester abroad.  And then he just showed up on January 2nd of last year, like he’d never been gone, like none of it had ever happened – except the things he can do now, the people he knows, how completely he annihilates threats to the pack. When he gets like this…there’s darkness in him. This means that he’s fighting not to give into it.”

Cole chooses that exact moment to smash his face up against the door, sticking his tongue out and effectively shattering the moment.  Isaac sweeps up a stack of plates and heads for the patio, leaving a stunned and information-overload-ed Derek standing alone in the kitchen. He opens the door just in time to hear Stiles moan, “Oh God, what if I’m supposed to bring a gift?" 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, yeah, yeah, seriously I'm the worst/have had a ton of work/write extremely slowly. Forgive me? I love you? You're the best?


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Derek has a remarkably busy week -- and it seems to feature Stiles at every turn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YO. ATTENTION. After input from the amazing JjDunn, I re-posted the original version of Chapter 6 featuring angry Derek , and some of those changes impact what happens in this chapter as well as the rest of the story. I highly recommend going back and re-reading at least the first half of Chapter 6 so you catch the references - sorry for the retcon, and let me know what you think!
> 
> Change made on 25 September.

**Monday**

Derek decides to stay home Monday night. Call him old-fashioned, but after nearly killing a pack member on Friday, spending Saturday almost going out of his mind trying to reconcile all the new information about the Hale fire, passing most of Sunday puttering around the firehouse while Stiles alternated between calling his various supernatural acquaintances and incessantly jabbering aloud to himself about incredibly trivial things while the original Beacon Hills contingent of the pack watched him worriedly, pretending to be otherwise occupied, and if he doesn’t get some alone time he might just take Kate at her word and off Stiles himself to get some peace of mind.

Not really.

Probably.

He’s almost 100% kidding.

Too soon?

Too soon.

So he packs up after his last class, heads back to his apartment, gathers his requisite accumulated stack of junk mail, and changes into workout clothes. He draws a line at actually going for a run in the woods – he’s antsy, not suicidal – but there’s a tiny gym in the basement of his building where he abuses a treadmill for half an hour and throws some weights around. He finishes up with a few long stretches, then checks his watch – it’s still early enough that he’ll have plenty of time to make dinner and spend a few hours grading papers (because he’s seriously, _seriously_ behind on that).

When he trudges back up the stairs, he finds Stiles sitting on the floor of his hall, leaning against his door. He looks up when Derek stops dead in the hallway and offers a pathetic sort of grin.

“Hey, Sourwolf.”

“What are you doing here?” Derek leans over Stiles’ head to unlock his door, and Stiles scrambles one-handedly to collect his calculator, notebook, and textbook.

“Multi-variable calculus, if you must know.”

Derek stalks inside his apartment and yanks the fridge open, pulling out his water bottle. “Stiles.”

Stiles scrunches up his face in a wince. “Scott kinda kicked me out for the night.”

Derek doesn’t even respond to that.

“He said I was freaking Cole and Tink out,” Stiles continues undeterred, scattering his school supplies across Derek’s small kitchen table. “He’s probably right. Anyway, no one’s supposed to be by themselves until we get all this shit sorted out, you least of all, oh-he-whom-our-banshee-marked-for-death, so if I can’t be home and you can’t be alone, this is the arrangement that makes the most sense.”

Derek continues to not respond.

“Glare all you want, big guy. I’m not going anywhere. Danny’s coming over, too – he wants to put up a camera in your bathroom.” Stiles wiggles his eyebrows suggestively, now _obviously_ trying to get a rise out of him, and if Derek didn’t have 18 years’ experience ignoring Cora when she got into one of her moods, he might’ve fallen for it. As it is, he continues staring until Stiles relents, putting his hands up in the air. “All right, all right. Not in your bathroom. Probably one in the main living space, you know, here-ish to there-ish, just to keep tabs when you’re out. And Scott says I barely count as your second when I’m so tapped out, so we’ll need Danny around.”

Buried under the jabber is logic that Derek can’t really argue with. He settles for growling, “You’re making dinner,” then stomps off to the bathroom to shower in what is definitely _not_ a childish show of emotion.

He tried to _kill_ Stiles. 72 hours ago, his wolf took over and he tried to kill Stiles, but the guy’s hanging out in his kitchen bemoaning his math homework like he’s supremely unbothered by the entire situation.

So Stiles either trusts Derek, or he’s just absolutely freaking insane, because there’s still a small part of Derek’s wolf that is quietly and persistently calling for revenge from deep inside his chest.

 

If Stiles’ chicken cacciatore happens to be one of the better things Derek has eaten in recent memory, no one needs to know.

And if it’s strangely reassuring to have Danny install a tiny surveillance cam over his door and show him how to access the feed via the pack’s private website, no one needs to know that, either. And if Danny wants to hang around afterwards, quietly writing lines of code, that’s cool too.

Also, he _supposes_ that once Stiles finally calms the fuck down over a cup of peppermint green tea and settles into working through his insanely complicated homework with only a stray mutter here and there, it’s not terrible to have him in the apartment.

It’s actually kind of…nice. Danny works at the kitchen counter, Stiles takes over the table, Derek spreads essays out across the couch. No one talks much (which is actually astonishing), but Danny refills everyone’s tea or water every half hour or so, and there are no suspicious creaks or groans from the floorboards that he can’t chalk up to one of them moving around. When he finally calls it quits and heads to bed, he absentmindedly runs a hand across both their heads, not realizing that he just scent-marked two guys who aren’t technically part of his pack until he’s sticking his toothbrush in his mouth.

And if finding them curled up together on his pull-out couch in the morning – Danny’s head pillowed on Stiles’ stomach and two of Stiles’ fingers looped through the strap of the wifebeater Danny apparently wears to sleep – makes his wolf croon a happy little sigh of _content_ and _family_ and _pack_ , well, abso-fucking-lutely _no one_ needs to know that.

 

* * *

 

**Tuesday**

Tuesday evening finds Derek sitting on the arm of his couch, glaring at his landline – why the fuck does he even have a landline anymore, honestly, it’s 2017 – and playing various possible versions of the upcoming conversation through in his head.

“It’s already 10pm on the east coast, Der-Bear,” Stiles calls from the kitchen where he’s clattering around under the auspices of making coffee. “If you’re going to call tonight, you need to do it soon. Remember, they should be here by next Wednesday if they’re coming – Friday the 20th is the full moon, so that’s probably when the Alphas will pull whatever diabolical stunt they’re hatching.”

Derek growls under his breath, more at the nickname than the reminder. Danny, cross-legged on the floor in front of Derek’s coffee table with his giant laptop whirring away, snorts back laughter.

 _What’s the worst Peter could say?_ Derek reasons with himself for the eightieth time since taking up his perch. _If he says no, he says no. And it keeps Cora out of danger. Although she’d probably just find a way to sneak out and catch a Greyhound._

Stiles pads into the living room somehow balancing three mugs between the spindly fingers of his left hand. “You know, Derek, I would have taken you for an eccentric mug collection kind of guy.” He slides two mugs across the table near Danny, and hands a third (solid blue) to Derek. “But nope – these came straight from an IKEA box set, like everything else in this apartment.”

“I don’t have an espresso machine,” Derek says dumbly, staring into his mug where a startlingly accurate wolf is drawn into the foam. “Or even a milk foamer. How in the hell did you do this?”

Stiles waggles the fingers of one hand in the air in what Derek has come to recognize as his catch-all magic/sorcery/mystery gesture, which distracts Derek just long enough to not notice that Stiles’ other hand is dialing the phone.

“Stiles, no!”

“Whoops, too late, so sorry,” Stiles says with a shit-eating grin, tossing the now-ringing phone to Derek’s chest. “Got the number off your cell when you weren’t looking. You should really put a passcode on that, you know.” He folds himself down to the floor next to Danny and wreathes his fingers around the red mug, watching Derek sweat over the rim as the phone continues to ring. Derek’s hoping against hope that maybe no one will pick up when the ringer cuts itself off and his little sister, slightly out of breath, answers.

“Who is this?”

“Cora! It’s Derek.”

“Derek?” Cora takes a few breaths. “Derek who?”

“Derek Hale? Your brother.”

Stiles convulses in silent laughter, probably at the face Derek is making.

“Derek? Why the fuck did you call the house phone? Why the fuck do we even have a landline? What is this, the 20th century? Wait, what the fuck number did you call from, that isn’t your cell on the ID.”

“I called from my landline,” Derek says, pinching the bridge of his nose and trying to ignore Stiles, who’s now rolling around on the floor. Danny good-naturedly shoves him away every time he gets too close.

“Why the fuck do _you_ have a landline? Do you know how long it took me to find this phone?”

“Cora,” Derek says patiently. “Is Peter home?”

Cora cuts herself off mid-swear, and even over the phone Derek can hear her pulse jump in tempo. “Yeah, yeah, he’s around – what’s going on?”

“I just need to talk to him for a minute. Can you put him on?”

“You know I’ll just eavesdrop. You might as well tell me.”

“I need to tell Peter first. Directly. Whatever. Can you put him on?”

Cora makes a noise of disgust, there’s a clacking sound, and Cora shouts Peter’s name.

“Nephew,” Peter says evenly a few minutes later. “Why on earth does my home have a landline?”

Stiles is probably now in very real danger of asphyxiation.

“I have no idea, Peter,” Derek sighs. “I never really lived in that house, so take it up with the contractor?”

“I may do just that,” Peter says, and Derek winces – he probably just resigned some perfectly innocent contractor to an extremely unpleasant and off-putting conversation. “Now, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“You know how you asked the McCall pack to keep an eye out for me when I moved out here? I’ve been spending time with them, and it turns out that we’ve got a few…unwelcome visitors.”

“Do tell.” Derek gets the sense that Peter is very, very much enjoying this – and Stiles isn’t laughing anymore. He’s watching Derek intently, something flashing behind his eyes.

“Do you remember an Alpha Deucalion? Said he came to the Winter Solstice we had just before the fire.”

“One of the British packs, wasn’t it? I remember him being blind and still having remarkable taste in suits.”

Derek kicks at a couch cushion a little, still not sure how to frame what’s going on without giving Peter too much information. Family or not, good intentions or not, Peter spends most of his time walking a very treacherous precipice of insanity and it’s not always apparent what will shove him over the edge for a while. “That’s him. But he, uh, isn’t in a British pack anymore.”

“He’s an Omega?” Peter lets out a laugh. “What an odd turn of events.”

“He’s not an Omega,” Derek says carefully. “He’s still an Alpha. And he runs in a pack of Alphas.”

There’s silence from the other end of the phone.

“Peter? Did you hear me?”

“I heard you, nephew,” Peter says softly, over-enunciating like he does when he’s thinking more than he’s paying attention to the conversation. “An Alpha Pack. My, but this is an interesting development.”

Derek shudders at what his uncle finds _interesting_. “Yeah, well, they’re here. And it’s not the first time they’ve gone up against the McCall pack, and they’re trying to get Scott to kill the rest of the pack and join them. Or to get me to join the McCall pack, kill everyone, and then join them.”

“And you called for my advice? Well, I must say, Derek, it’s certainly an intriguing proposition for you to consider – that amount of _power_ \--.”

“That’s _not_ why I’m calling,” Derek cuts him off, well aware that Stiles is listening and now bristling at the implication. This is all too soon – it’s too much after Friday, with Derek’s wolf uneasy and too close to the surface. “We’re bringing in all the allies we can think of to help, and you – you and Cora – you’re who I thought of.”

“Oh, I don’t know, Derek, you were _so_ insistent on having nothing to do with us anymore when you moved.”

“Please, Peter,” Derek says through gritted teeth. “I’d consider it a personal favor.”

“Do I owe you any favors?”

“There was that whole behind-the-back, outright-lying thing you did when I asked about other packs in the Greymar area.”

“The past is in the past, Derek,” Peter sighs loftily.

Derek notices Stiles frantically trying to get his attention out of the corner of his eye, and looks over to see him holding up a piece of paper with “Hunters!!! Argents!!!” written on it. Derek pushes off the couch and takes up pacing behind it, spinning furiously on his heel every four steps. Furious that Peter won’t just get on a damn plane and come help because he asked, furious that he’s going to have to play this card. The only thing he’s got going for him is that they’re still a week and a half out from the full moon, so Peter might – _might_ – be able to control his reaction.

“Is Cora still listening?” He asks abruptly.

“I do believe she is, yes. Why?” Peter yawns.

“Cora,” Derek says, raising his voice temporarily. “You need to leave the house.”

“Derek, what --?”

“Find somewhere else to be tonight,” Derek continues, bulldozing over Peter’s protests. “Maybe tomorrow night, too. Don’t ask questions, don’t be a brat, just do it.”

There’s a muffled shriek of outrage and several slammed doors from the other end of the line.

Peter chuckles. “That was suitably dramatic, Derek. What else do you need to tell me?”

Derek takes a deep breath, steeling himself. “Just how far in the past _is_ the past, Peter? Because Deucalion isn’t the only one in town. Hunters are here, too – and Kate Argent is leading the charge.”

 

Derek might not be part of his uncle’s pack anymore, and he might not really be part of the McCall pack yet, but apparently both connections are strong enough anyway because immediately after the landline goes dead, his cell phone, along with Stiles’ and Danny’s, light up with a string of text messages into the pack’s group chat.

 **What in the hell was that** , Isaac demands.

 **Everyone okay? Sound off** , Scott writes back.

 **Me and Tink are fine,** Bree writes. **At the house. What happened?**

 **All clear in Palo Alto** , comes from a number Derek doesn’t have saved, but assumes is Lydia. **It’s too late to check with Kira or Jackson, but I don’t feel anything off about either of them**.

 **Me and Ethan are fine too,** Cole offers a second later. **Heading back from the station.**

By the time Derek finishes catching up, Stiles’ fingers are already flying across the face of his own phone, so he doesn’t bother sending an additional message when Stiles’ text flashes through:

**Stiles, Danny, and Derek all good. What you just felt, ladies and gentlewolves, was a certain Hale Alpha accepting our invitation to dinner.**

 

 

* * *

 

**Wednesday**

Derek spends the majority of Wednesday night committing the finer points of the western edge of the McCall pack’s territory to memory as he walks it in a painfully slow arc with Stiles and Isaac. Stiles stops at every fourth tree to carve a weird little symbol into the bark, nick open one of his fingers with a pocketknife, and press a few drops of his blood into the mark while muttering something foreign under his breath. Derek stops asking what he’s doing after the first few trees, because the answer becomes apparent – he’s putting up some sort of ward.  Stiles fends off all their offers of help, too, so he ends up walking a few steps behind him in sync with Isaac, splitting his attention between keeping watch and trying not to notice how each new mark leaves Stiles a little more rundown, a little more shaken, a little less steady.

“Should he even be doing this?” Derek asks Isaac in werewolf-only tones as they near midnight and Stiles has to lean on each tree for support while he spells it. The bright white straps of his sling stand out sharply against his hoodie and every time he notices, Derek is forcibly jolted back to the rage and shame of what happened on Friday. “He looks like he’s not going to make it on his own much longer.”

The strain of watching his Emissary deplete himself for the sake of the pack reads clearly all over Isaac’s features. “I know. But he insists on finishing before he leaves for the wedding on Friday. At least after this he’s only got the northern boundary left, and that’s the shortest bit.”

Derek watches Stiles stumble to the next tree. “What’s the spell do, exactly?”

“He told you about the main boundary, right? The one he bases at the Nemeton?”

Derek nods.

“It’s like that, only more focused. He explains it like an advanced warning system – anything supernatural crosses the line, he feels it. I think he can tie it to Scott, too, so Scott gets alerted as well. When he comes back with Gwen on Saturday, they’ll set up something Stiles calls a Stop-All - it’s like mountain ash, except it keeps _everyone_ out, humans and wolves alike. They’ll leave one element of it undone, and that way, when this boundary triggers, they’ll have time to activate it. We’ll be safe inside the firehouse.”

It’s another hour and a half before Stiles lets out a triumphant crow and turns back to look at them with a lopsided grin. “Found the one I started with on Monday! Take me home, wolfmen.”

Stiles doesn’t even pretend to grumble about it when Isaac sweeps him up into a modified fireman’s carry. He’s asleep before they’re back to the house.

 

Derek wakes up groggily with an overwhelming need to piss around 4AM in the room he’s sort of unofficially claimed as his own in the firehouse. It’s at the southeast corner, with Ethan on one side and Isaac one empty bedroom and a shared bathroom away on the other.

He heads to that bathroom now, tugging a pair of sweatpants on over his briefs. He’s washing his hands and considering getting a glass of water when a tiny noise flips all his senses to high alert, and he smacks the light on the bathroom wall off with such force that the little switch nearly breaks his knuckle. He moves carefully down the hallway and stairs, taking stock of everything he hears and smells – it’s all pack, as far as he can tell, normal resting heartrates from almost everyone except…Stiles.

There’s a faint glow emanating from the kitchen, so that’s where he heads. He finds Stiles hunched over the stove, scrubbing at it furiously with a steel brush and tiny, repetitive motions.  The glow is coming from a mason jar on the counter, where a fist-sized orb of light hovers in place.

Stiles doesn’t acknowledge him at first, so Derek just sits at one of the barstools and waits. When Stiles moves on to cleaning the inside of the oven, Derek decides to break the silence, injecting as much calm and reassurance into his voice as he can.

“It’s going to be okay, Stiles. Everyone’s going to be fine.”

“Don’t talk about things you don’t understand,” Stiles says, with a harshness that Derek’s never heard from him before. “You weren’t here, you don’t know.”

“You’re doing everything you can.”

“Shut up,” Stiles says, dropping the brush, flipping so his back is against the wall, and sliding to the floor. He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Just…just shut up.”

So Derek shuts up. He shuts up, but he stays. At some point, Stiles starts cleaning again, and Derek probably dozes off with his head in his hands a couple times. But when Stiles finally calls it quits around 6:30, carefully puts his cleaning supplies away, and heads upstairs, he briefly touches Derek’s shoulder on the way past.

It’s enough.

 

* * *

  
**Thursday**

Thursday night finds Derek on surveillance duty. This translates to him in Danny’s room, sitting in front of Danny’s six computer monitors, all of which are live-streaming views of either the Alphas’ or the hunters’ bases. A half-eaten bowl of pasta sits precariously near his left elbow as he jots a set of observations into the document Danny has pulled up on his tertiary laptop.

(“Tertiary?” Derek had asked, hefting the slightly scaled-down version of the behemoth Danny usually hauled around. “Why do you need three laptops? Wait, if this is the third, where’s the second?”

“You’re looking at it,” Danny said without looking up, nodding at the aforementioned behemoth he was working on.

“Okay, so where’s the first?”

Danny’s fingers paused. “What’s your FBI security clearance?”

“Uh.” Derek thought through the incredibly confusing series of phone interviews he’d had over the past week. “Just the basics, I think. Level one?”

“Yes, you’re Level One,” Danny affirmed. “Stop asking questions that threaten federal security.”

Derek’s still not sure how much of that was a joke.)

Other than pondering Danny’s exactly level of “computer wizardry,” as Stiles called it, surveillance duty doesn’t really give Derek a lot to do. The hunters come and go – pretty mundane tasks, grocery shopping and the like – while the Alphas tend to stay in the house. Radio silence from both sides is starting to get a little unnerving, which is probably why Derek jumps three feet off his chair when Bree sneaks up to the door and says his name.

“Derek?”

“Crap! Oh, hey, Bree, sorry, I didn’t hear you come up, I was…you know…watching,” he finishes lamely, gesturing at the screens.

Bree smirks a little. “No problem, Der-Bear. Anyway, Scott says your family is almost here, and he sent me up to relieve you. He and Stiles want you downstairs to help with the Argent thing.”

Derek hoists himself out of Danny’s computer chair and makes his way downstairs, where he finds most of the pack in the same positions they occupied the first time he came to the firehouse. Chris Argent, Derek knows, has made himself scarce for the evening, and there’s a gap where Bree normally stands in front of Cole and Tink, so that’s where Derek plants himself – feet spread, claws out, ready to defend the two mini-Argents against the remainder of his biological family.

What the everloving _fuck_ has his life turned into?

No one speaks for a few minutes. The tension in the room is palpable – of the backup Stiles and the other pack members have called in, Peter and Cora are the first to arrive and the least known to everyone besides Derek.

“Stiles,” Derek says evenly when he hears a motor stop outside the house. “You’ve got the mountain ash circle ready to drop, right?”

Stiles actually looks personally offended. “ _Dude_. Of course I – _dude_!”

Derek waves off his indignation. “Drop it immediately when they come in. Just Peter if you can’t get both. Cora will be fine, but let’s…let’s not take any chances.”

Stiles narrows his eyes, and the assessing gaze somehow feels more invasive than an x-ray. He whips his head back around to the door at the sound of footsteps on the path, and Derek startles a bit when a tiny pressure appears at the back of his left hip. He looks down under his arm to find Tink’s index finger firmly locked around his belt loop.

“Tink,” he says quietly. “You okay?”

“Whatever,” she whispers, her voice shaking ever so slightly. “No. Not really.”

He ruffles her hair fondly, surprised by the amount of warmth he feels for this tragically misplaced little girl. “Don’t worry,” he says, giving her a wink as she bats his hand away with the arm that isn’t anchored to his jeans. “I can take him.”

There’s a knock at the door, and Derek shifts his attention forward, focusing in on the two heartbeats just outside that are almost as familiar to him as his own.

 

All things considered, it’s anticlimactic. Yes, Peter probably would have broken a few things if Stiles hadn’t smoothly dropped the mountain ash circle until they could explain, and yes, Derek really, _really_ doesn’t like the look Peter’s got in eyes that rarely fade from Alpha red, but no one dies and all the furniture stays intact and Cora hits it off with Cole and Isaac like they’ve all been best friends since birth, so Derek’s counting it as a win.

Once everyone settles, Stiles takes off into the woods again to finish the northern wards, this time flanked by Ethan and Bree. Derek watches him carefully as they head out, aware that he’s not the only one doing so, annoyed by how much Stiles’ well-being apparently matters to him now.

Cora, of course, takes one look at Derek’s face, tracks his eyeline to Stiles tugging on his red hoodie, and bursts out laughing.

“You’re _hopeless_ ,” she says later, when it’s almost midnight and she’s seated at the foot of his bed, having claimed the spare room between his and Isaac’s as her own for the time being. Peter’s stationed in one of the rooms on the ground floor – as far away from Tink and Cole as possible. “Seriously. You’ve barely been out here for two months, and you’re already making googly eyes at some guy you just met.”

Derek hurls a pillow at her with as much accuracy as he can manage without looking away from his laptop, where he’s reviewing notes for tomorrow’s classes. “House full of werewolves, Cora – keep your voice down.”

“Oh, come on. It’s painfully obvious to literally everyone. Except maybe Stiles,” she muses, scrolling aimlessly through something on her own laptop. After the fire, she’d flat-out refused to go back to school, an arrangement she only got away with by virtue of homeschooling herself through some online program Derek had helped her find. “And you, maybe. You’ve always been terrible at liking people.”

“There’s a lot more going on than you know about,” Derek protests, viscerally remembering the feel of Stiles’ blood in his mouth, the triumph soaring through him at that moment.

“Yeah, like you having the emotional maturity of an eight-year old.”

“Cora,” Derek says warningly.

“ _Der_ -ek,” she mocks.

 

* * *

 

**Friday**

 

Derek’s class schedule is light on Friday, and the weather’s still mild enough that he can give Cora a full tour of Greymar’s campus in the afternoon without umbrellas or heavy winter coats. He probably goes into a little too much detail – including introducing her to every single English department faculty member and half the students in his classes – but Cora actually puts on her social pants for once and seems to be enjoying herself.

It helps, Derek thinks, that Cole joins them once his school day ends. Derek parks them on a bench outside the library while he runs in to get coffee, and watches them interact surreptitiously through the blinds while he waits for his order.

“Who are we watching?” Asks a voice near his elbow.

“Hannah!” Derek smiles at the Anthro grad student he’s been on two dates with. “Hi, I didn’t hear you.”

“I’m stealthy like that.” Hannah takes a sip of her own coffee and transfers her bookbag to the other shoulder, so it’s not trapping her unruly blonde braid under the strap. “Anyway, who are we stalking?”

“I’m not stalking! That,” Derek points,” is my little sister Cora who’s visiting for the weekend, and that’s Cole, and I’m pretty sure they like each other but I’m also historically atrocious at this sort of thing.”

“No, _really_?” Hannah says, raising an eyebrow. “And here I thought you not calling me for two weeks meant that you were _awesome_ at all of this.”

Blood rushes to Derek’s cheeks as he opens his mouth to speak.

“Stop it,” Hannah commands before he can get a word out. “No being cute and blushing when I’m annoyed with you.”

All of Derek’s breath leaves him in a huff and he scrubs a hand across his hair. “Look, Hannah…”

She laughs, a bright tinkling that Derek remembers fondly. “Don’t worry about it, Derek. There’s someone else, right?”

“I – I mean – kinda, yeah,” he splutters and finishes lamely. “I’m really sorry. I’ve got…I’ve got a lot going on at the moment.”

She shrugs. “I figured as much. You took his call at one in the morning after our first date.”

He squints at her. “Are you psychic or something? How do you even remember that?”

She squints right back up at him and gestures at herself from head to toe. “I’m five feet and six inches of intelligence, sass, and awesome tits. Guys don’t leave me in the middle of the night to take phone calls from other guys unless there’s a serious love connection.”

Derek’s blushing again, and he’s only saved by his order being called over the speaker. He rescues his two coffees and a hot tea, and comes back to find Hannah still watching Cora and Cole laugh quietly on the bench outside.

“Listen, Hannah, even though we – I – do you want to still get coffee sometime? Maybe tomorrow?”

Hannah laughs again. “Derek Hale, are you seriously giving me the ‘let’s just be friends’ line?”

“No!” Derek protests, juggling his drink carrier while pulling a buzzing cell phone out of his pocket. “I mean kind of, yes, because I do want to stay friends.”

Hannah just keeps laughing. “Yes, Derek, we can be friends. I can’t do coffee this weekend, though – my sister’s actually coming to visit, too.”

“Oh, okay.” Derek thumbs across his screen and into the pack’s group chat, where a text from Isaac, who’s accompanying Stiles on the drive up to the Nemeton, the Fae wedding, and to bring some friend of Stiles’ back, blinks **primary boundary reset in 5, 4, 3, 2.** On cue, a slight _thrum_ whistles through Derek’s chest.

Hannah blinks and looks around, startled. “What was that?”

“What was what?” Derek asks, the picture of innocence (he hopes).

“There was just…” Hannah trails off, still looking over her shoulder. “It felt like wind? Inside?” She laughs and shakes her head. “Sorry, it’s been a long week.”

Derek snorts a laugh into the plastic lid of his coffee. “Yeah. I know what you mean.”

 

           

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters in a week! Here's hoping the spree continues, because next time on Six Degrees: A Fae wedding!


	8. Chapter 8

Stiles has a lot of issues with the Fae. For starters, they’re insanely territorial – like, worse than an Alpha werewolf on a full moon if another Alpha somehow wanders onto his lands. For another, their volatile personalities are only matched by their highly unstable magic. For a third, they have eighty zillion different social protocols that change based on relative rank of the beings involved in the conversation and what season it is and what direction you’re facing and all sorts of other shit that Stiles really can’t be bothered to think about, much less memorize and execute at a moment’s notice.

They do throw one hell of a party, though.

“THAT…WAS…AWESOME!” Stiles crows as he and Gwen sprint away from the Mound, dodging intoxicated Fae that have spilled out onto the surrounding lawn.

“You’re _insane_ ,” Gwen shouts back, apparently in significantly better cardiovascular health that Stiles because her breathing is somehow still mostly even. “ _Why_ did you dance with Bealla? For that matter, why in the name of God did you accept Fetono’s challenge?”

“It was a dare!” Stiles yells, outraged. “Stiles Stilinski never turns down a dare!”

“You almost got us both killed!” Gwen protests, rounding on him once they both feel the slight pinching sensation that means they’ve passed out of the Culwierl Realm. “I probably won’t be welcome back for _years_ , and I’m practically related to them.”

“Oh please, you’re Dolili Fae, not Culwierl,” Stiles says dismissively, putting his hands on his knees and sucking in big gasps of air. “Seriously, how are you not even slightly winded?”

Gwen fixes him with a look that forcibly reminds him of Lydia. “Aren’t you the one that taught me the importance of running with my pack?”

“Yeah, but – sprinting – near death – _sprinting_!”

Gwen rolls her eyes, and yep, Stiles definitely regrets letting her and Lydia meet for those couple days last year. “Where’s Isaac picking us up?”

Stiles gestures wildly east, thankful for the zillionth time that night that the Nemeton stitched his collarbone, and Gwen takes off walking in that direction. He catches up a few minutes later, still slightly out of breath. “It was just a little fun, Gwen. Lighten up.”

 Gwen pushes a tree branch out of the way with unnecessary force. “I thought you needed them to help. I thought I could bring you because they _like_ you, they _owe_ you, and it’d be good for me to actually be in their good graces for once, but _no_ , you have to go cause a huge fricking scene.”

“Gwen!” Stiles catches at her arm and forces her to stop walking. He ignores the miniscule bolt of lightning that shoots through his veins, his magic acknowledging hers. “Would you just – just calm down for ten seconds, okay? It’s _fine_. Fetono’s the second-lowest level lieutenant in the realm, and Bealla broke off her engagement to Troika six months ago. I didn’t offend anyone important. I talked to King Gorlin before the dancing started, and he agreed to send down a troop if we need them, which I’m hoping we won’t, but it’s always nice to have a little extra magic firepower in the bank.”

Gwen tugs her arm out of his grasp, and the tingle fades as she stalks away again. “You’re the worst. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why didn’t _you_ trust _me_?” Stiles shoots back, mildly peeved by how this conversation is going. He’d been having a remarkably fun night, but with his buzz effectively killed, the post-Nemeton drain is starting to hit him hard. His phones vibrates against his leg, and he nearly dislocates an elbow trying to get it out of the pocket of his perfectly tailored suit pants (last year’s Christmas gift from Lydia, who’d insisted that a nearly grown-ass man needed more in his wardrobe than faded jeans and perfectly worn-in khakis). “It’s Isaac,” he says, squinting at the screen until the brightness fades to a level more appropriate for the darkness around them, just beginning to be shot through with the first rays of Saturday. “He’s in place. Whoa, _fuck_!”

He stumbles over a tree root, Gwen’s hand on his elbow just barely saving him from hitting the ground. She hitches his arm around her shoulders and starts pulling him along. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Stiles. I know you’re some sort of war genius and I’m not supposed to ask you about how you know the things you know, but you’re also an idiot most of the time and you never tell anyone what you’re planning.”

“Hey!” Stiles protests, surprised by how slurred his speech is. “I talk to Scott.”

“When you feel like it,” Gwen counters. “I talk to Lydia. I know things, too.”

“Girls are the worst,” Stiles declares. Their next few steps take them out of the forest and onto a side road, where Isaac’s idling in his green pickup truck. He leaps out at the sight of them and helps Gwen folds Stiles into the backseat, ignoring Stiles’ protests that he can handle himself – which sound weak even to _his_ ears.

“How’d it go?” He hears Isaac ask.

“Brilliant!” Stiles crows, throwing his hands in the air and hitting the knuckles of one hand against the window. “Ow.”

 

* * *

 

The tension in the firehouse grates on every single one of Derek’s senses. He can hear it in the creak of the floorboards upstairs as Scott paces, he can see it in Ethan’s eyes as he stares Peter down across the living room, he can smell it rolling off every single member of both packs.

Two Alphas under one roof does _not_ a harmonious living space make.

“Why aren’t they back yet?” Tink mutters, perched on a chair near the window, her forgotten homework balanced on her knees. “They said they’d be back by lunch on Saturday.”

“It’s only midday just now, Tink,” Cole says gently, “Isaac texted when they set out; I’m sure they’ll be here soon.”

“It’s better when him and Isaac are here.”

“That’s natural,” Cora inserts from her spot on the floor, just near enough that the back of her head brushes Cole’s knees every so often. “For you to feel better when your pack is whole and together, I mean.”

 _No kidding_ , Derek thinks, shifting restlessly in an armchair and nearly sending a partially-graded stack of papers to the floor. _That’s why you and me and Peter were so broken after the fire_.

The seven sets of werewolf ears in the room perk up at the same time when Isaac’s truck rumbles into earshot. Scott comes bounding down the stairs, jumping the last six entirely, all smiles as he pulls the front door open and receives a sleep-drunk Stiles falling into his arms.

“Scotty!” Stiles slurs, slinging an elbow around Scott’s neck to support himself. “Slept mos’ of the way back, need to go’a bed now, but I Emissary present Gwen Emissary Ritter pack, blah blah blah, safe passage blah blah, okay? Okay.”

“Okay, buddy,” Scott laughs. The tension in the room seems to reduce by half in the space of a breath, diminishing even further when Isaac follows Stiles through the door and sweeps the still-babbling Emissary up in a bridal carry.

“C’mon, Stilinski,” Isaac says, heading for the stairs and stopping just long enough to rub shoulders with Scott. “Let’s get you to bed.”

Derek wants to say something to Stiles – what, he isn’t sure – maybe _Hey, glad you’re back_ or _Still_ super _glad I didn’t manage to kill you last week_ – but he gets flustered under Cora’s intensely watchful eyes and the hovering presence of Peter off to his left somewhere. Instead, he watches Isaac carry Stiles up the stairs until a jostling at the door reminds him that they brought someone else back, someone named –

“Hannah?” Derek asks confusedly, staring at the girl in the doorway who’s exactly like Hannah if Hannah were four inches shorter and wore thick-rimmed black glasses.

“Gwen, actually,” not-Hannah says, nudging her glasses back up her nose. “How do you know my sister?”

Before Derek can answer, Bree barrels into Gwen’s side, hugging her fiercely and probably touching more than is strictly necessary. “You smell,” Bree says flatly, ignoring Gwen’s laughing attempts to extricate herself.

“Like my pack!” Gwen squawks, wriggling around for another couple seconds before giving up when Danny starts hugging from the other side. “You’re all terrible. Alpha McCall, control your puppies!”

Scott, for his part, takes a running start and gleefully tackles all three to the ground.

 

* * *

 

Chris Argent trusts Peter Hale about as far as he can throw him. And he’s _tried_ to throw werewolves – it’s not a distance to brag about. For that matter, Chris still doesn’t really trust Derek, but Scott and Stiles both vouched for the younger Hale even after Derek tried to kill them, so he supposes that counts for something.

But Peter…Peter, he watches. He plants a tracker on Peter’s rental car, he takes up near permanent residence on the roof of a squatty apartment complex two houses down from the firehouse and monitors the Alpha’s comings and goings, he persuades Danny to help him rig a tiny motion sensor trained on Peter’s bedroom door in the house so they’ll know if he gets up to anything at night.

So far, Chris is bored. Peter spends a lot of time sitting on the deck on his phone, avoiding most of the members of the McCall pack as completely as he can. So Chris starts splitting his time between watching Peter and pulling on his old strings in hunter circles, trying to figure out who exactly is in town and what they might be planning – but he didn’t go through eighteen years of harsh training at his parents’ hands and the next twenty-four years as a disciplined, renowned hunter to ignore his instincts about a wolf.

So he watches. And he waits.

 

* * *

 

It’s past midnight when Isaac leaves the Psych Lab.  The day’s experiment participants stopped rolling through around 8, but he’s got four midterms coming up in the next few days and is several hundred pages behind in Cog Psych. Despite the Alphas and the hunters and al the other chaotic bullshit, he’s still managing to hold his own in school – something Scott insists on – and it’s a good feeling. Like he’ll actually stand a chance of having a life in the non-supernatural world once everything quiets down.

If it ever quiets down, that is.

It’s a decent night for mid-October, and the bike home is brisk but pleasant. Ten uneventful moments later, he rounds the corner to the street the pack house is on, passing the coffeeshop that extends its hours around midterms and exams – and it’s only werewolf reflexes that stop him from flying over the handlebars when he brakes hard enough to burn rubber. Sitting inside the coffeeshop – inside _his_ coffeeshop – is Natalie. Who he’s barely thought about since she ran out on their date last weekend.

Before he’s really thought it through, he’s inside the shop, standing awkwardly over Natalie’s table.

“Sorry, are you closing?” Natalie asks without looking up from her laptop. “I’ll be done in just a minute, promise.”

They’re open until 3am during midterm week,” Isaac says, pulling out the chair across from her.

“Isaac!” Natalie exclaims, slapping her Mac shut. “What are you doing here?”

“I live just down the street,” he says carefully, watching her movements and listening to her rapid heartbeat. “I called you a few times last week. Didn’t hear back.”

She runs a hand through her hair and smiles, a small thing that’s just a shadow of the bright, wide grin he saw on their date. “Sorry. I’ve been really busy – American university isn’t anything like I expected. Except those red cups at parties that you see in movies – those are real, apparently.”

Isaac cocks his head and gives her a sad smile of his own. “I could probably help, you know.  Or you just could’ve told me that you were busy.”

She mumbles something affirmative and starts stuffing her thing into her bag, slinging it over one shoulder and standing up in a rush. “I should probably go.”

“What? Natalie -?”

Isaac follows her outside, reaching out to snag her forearm. She hisses in pain, twisting away from him, and he lets go in surprise – although not before her sleeve rides up enough to show a dark purple-blue bruise above her wrist. She clutches it to her chest, backing away from him warily.

“Isaac, look – I’m just really busy, okay?”

“Okay, that’s fine,” he says, unconsciously slipping into the calm, even tone he’s heard his Behavioral Psych professors use in mock therapy sessions. The tone his own therapist used on him, in the two years he went to weekly sessions to get over spending most of his formative teenage years terrified of his father and locked in a freezer. He takes a tentative step toward her, but stops when she takes a corresponding step back. “That’s totally fine. Maybe we can just talk for a minute?”

“You should leave me alone, Isaac,” she says. “You seem like a really nice guy, and you should just…you should leave me alone.”

“I can help you,” he says, taking a deep whiff of her scent – something fruity (apples, maybe?), honed wood, beeswax, and undercutting it all, the sickly-sweet scent of healing. “If someone’s hurting you…”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, her voice bordering on hysteria. “Just…just leave me alone, all right?”

 

* * *

 

Derek spends Sunday afternoon lounging on the floor of the firehouse living room with Cora, shifting every twenty minutes or so to follow the patches of sunlight the windows cast. He’s ostensibly grading papers and she’s supposed to be researching some topic assigned to her by Danny as he breezed out of the house earlier, saying he was going to be in the CompSci building for the rest of the day, but really they’re just taking intermittent naps and hanging out with other pack members that wander through and enjoying being near one another again. Gwen – whom Derek is 99% certain is the female version of Stiles, right down to the plaid shirts – had even read with them for awhile before heading into campus to meet Hannah.

Peter, as usual, is brooding on the deck.

“So you dated Stiles’ friend’s sister who was best friends with Kate Argent in college?” Cora wonders aloud after Gwen heads out, peering at Derek from her half upside-down position, back on the floor and legs thrown over Isaac’s, who’s fallen asleep watching TV again.  “We should probably be making a chart of how everyone is related. It’s making my head hurt.”

“Hannah and I went on two dates,” Derek defends. “I don’t think we exactly qualify as star-crossed lovers.”

“Still. Is she half-Fae, too?”

“I have no idea. That’s not really something you ask someone _on the second date_.”

“It probably should be,” Cora muses. “You should make people fill out a questionnaire before you go out with them. Question one: Are you now, have you ever been, or are you related to someone of the supernatural persuasion?”

"I hate you.”

“Question two: Are you a sociopathic, murdering bitch?”

“I hate you _so much_.”

“I’m your sister. It’s a biological imperative.”

“I don’t think you’re using that phrase correctly, Little Miss Smarty-Pants.”

“Yeah, well, I’m smart enough to get accepted here.”

Derek pauses in the middle of crossing something out with his red felt-tipped Pen of Doom (nicknamed by Stiles, of course) and levers himself up onto his elbows, fixing her with a stare. “What did you say?”

Cora smiles a small, private smile – one of her only smiles that’s genuine – and sheepishly flips her laptop around to show him the acceptance email sitting in her inbox. “I got accepted to Greymar, class of 2022. I got the email yesterday.”

“Cora, I didn’t even…” He draws her into a brief, tight hug, his brain swirling with pride and happiness. “I didn’t even know you applied. Or that you’ve gotten your G.E.D.”

“I finished my G.E.D. in January,” she says easily. “I’ve been taking online courses through one of the community colleges back in Maine ever since, all on scholarship because, you know, survivor of a tragedy and all that. I applied to Greymar and UW as soon as you moved out here.”

“And you’re serious about this?” Derek asks, more aware than normal of how quickly his heart is clenching and releasing. This is something he’d barely let himself hope for, a desire that he’s been consciously pushing down and out of his mind since it started piecing itself together a few weeks ago.

She shrugs, but Derek’s tuned into her pulse and can tell that she’s more invested than she wants to let on. “I like the campus. I liked the people you introduced me to on Friday. I don’t really know what I want to do with my life yet, but Greymar has all the major programs. I could be close to you again, and this pack…” She lowers her voice to a level barely audible even to werewolf ears. “I like this pack, Derek.”

Everything Derek’s learned about Cora in her 17 years of life informs how he interprets that simple statement. Always protective of her feelings, always fiercely independent, and after the fire, closed off and unwilling to admit that she needed anyone else in her life. All she might be willing or able to say is that she likes the McCall pack, but Derek knows what she means because he can feel the sentiment resonate deep in his own chest.

_I like this pack. Maybe they could be ours._

“Scott would say yes,” Isaac says quietly from the couch, and both Cora and Derek jump a few inches off the floor, not having realized that he’s awake. “To both of you. If you wanted to join the pack. We all would.”

Derek can’t formulate actual words, so he just links his fingers with Cora’s over the sun-drenched carpet and holds on for a few seconds. Maybe, just maybe, they could be happy here. They could learn to be whole again.

 

* * *

 

Stiles hums as he heads to his Jeep, happy with the work he got done for a Sunday. He woke up around noon – still a little wiped from his charge-up at the Nemeton, but pretty much recovered – and headed into campus, holing himself up in a rarely-frequented corner of the East Asian library he’d discovered sophomore year and blasting through his Calc 4 study guide, the rough draft of his Ancient Mythologies essay, and answering two dozen emails from students in the German Lit class he T.A.’s. It’s still light out, but just barely, and he can feel winter starting to creep in around the edges of autumn.

He wonders off-handedly if Derek’s going to be spending the night at the firehouse again.  Stiles is in favor of Peter and Cora staying at Derek’s apartment instead, but Scott’s uncomfortable having another Alpha running around on his territory but out of sight. So, the two additional Hales are in their temporary rooms at the firehouse, and having Derek around definitely helps keep Peter in line.

And that’s the only reason he wants Derek around, of course. To keep Peter on his best behavior. It has nothing at all to do with the fact that Derek helps Stiles feel grounded, that Derek is freaking gorgeous, that Derek is good with Tink, that Derek sat with Stiles while he stress-cleaned his way through a prolonged panic attack, that Derek that Derek that Derek…

Stiles chucks his backpack in the trunk and sits on his rear bumper, staring at a blank text message to Eyebrows McBroody. He’s done really, really well at killing feelings like these in the past. Ever since Malia, ever since senior year, ever since his time abroad – he’s learned to shut the emotional shit like this into a box in his brain, compress that box into a tiny little cube, and shelve it away somewhere to wither and gather dust. Compartmentalization 101, drilled into him by Chris Argent during those six weeks he spent training with him. Relationships outside his immediate ties to the pack are nothing but distractions, and distractions get the people he cares about hurt or worse, and the thing with Isaac had been proof of that.

Besides, if he’s being completely honest? He’s pretty sure a relationship is something that he just doesn’t get to have. Being Scott’s Emissary is a full-time job in and of itself, and now that he’s a decently established mercenary-for-hire of sorts, he’s got way too much on his plate to even consider starting to date someone.  And when he gets deep into something like the Alpha pack or hunters or that thing with the Spanish druid tribe last year, he’s constantly reminded of how he’s come to be where he is, knowing what he knows, having done what he’s done – and he doesn’t get to have a relationship. He doesn’t deserve one. The work he does now – this is his penance.

At any rate, Derek’s dating that Hannah chick.

His thumbs are hovering over the still-blank screen when he slowly becomes aware that figures are standing in front of him, backlit by the setting sun.

Hunters.

Seriously? He spends two fucking seconds thinking about Derek, and gets confronted by four hunters in a mostly-abandoned parking lot? _How_ is this fair?

He makes a show out of finishing his text, which he converts to _SOS Hunters in the north parking lot_ , and slides the phone into the pocket of his jacket before pushing off the bumper and settling into an easy stance in front of his adversaries, mentally tallying up his current arsenal as he does so. He’s relatively lightly armed when he comes to campus – as lightly armed as he ever is, given the mass of roiling darkness that seethes just under his skin these days – but he’s got a short knife strapped to his forearm and a pistol in the glove compartment, if he can get to it.

“Kate, Gerard,” he says brusquely, nodding at the two hunters he recognizes and tilting his head at the two he doesn’t. “Short blonde woman, guy with floppy hair – let me guess, Cole and Tink’s parents? Marie and Louis Argent?”

The small blonde laughs, a high, imperious sound that sends the faintest of chills down his spine. “You _did_ say he was observant, Gerard.”

Stiles grins, showing a few more teeth than strictly necessary. “British accent, so I’m saying I’m right on the first try. Nice to know that my reputation precedes me.” 

“Cut the crap, kid,” Kate says, swaggering forward. “I take it from the fact that you’re still alive that my former lover didn’t exact the retribution he so rightfully deserves.” She clucks her tongue. “Pity. How’d you talk him out of that one? Although it was always _so easy_ to talk Derek into whatever my little heart desired, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“Have you considered talking to someone, Kate? A professional? I really think you’d benefit from the help.”

“C’mon now, Stiles,” Kate cajoles. “You’re the Emissary – let’s have a nice, civil discussion about terms.”

“Well, let’s see,” Stiles says, crossing his arms. “ _You_ are the deranged psychopath who tried to kill my best friend and burned down the family of another of my friends. You,” he continues, facing Gerard, “are the deranged psychopath who chops innocent people in half with a goddamn broadsword, had me kidnapped, and beat the living shit of out me when I was sixteen. And you,” he finishes, with a sweeping glare at Marie and Louis, “are the deranged psychopaths trying to mercy kill their own children for something that they _shouldn’t be killed for_. So no, Kate, I don’t think we can have a civil discussion about terms.”

"Return Cole and Tiffany to us immediately,” Marie demands, holding her chin high, and Stiles is forcibly reminded of Victoria Argent from the days when they were young and alone, just him and newly-bitten Scott, barely any idea what a werewolf was, much less a werewolf-hunting family or how to survive one. The days when Victoria Argent – and Chris, Kate, and Gerard, he supposes – were utterly terrifying to him, the worst nightmare he could possibly conceive.

The thing is, he’s not sixteen anymore. And he knows for a fact that there are several around the world who have nightmares about _him_.

So instead of cowering, flailing, or babbling, he just snorts and side-eyes at Kate and Gerard. “Is she new? She must be new.”

“I’ve sent out the call to arms, Stiles. Reinforcements are going to start showing up any day now,” Kate says instead of answering. “Be smart for once in your pathetic, misguided life. You have until Friday to surrender the children to us for…disposal.”  

“You might as well just get on with whatever dastardly, Shakespearian plot you’ve got up your sleeve, because I don’t need until Friday to tell you that there’s absolutely no fucking way that’s going to happen,” he says, settling back against the bumper once more. He produces his phone from his pocket and scans the deluge of messages that have come into the pack’s group text since his SOS, then holds the phone out to show the hunters. “And my reinforcements are going to be here in about three seconds, so I’d hop to it if I were you.”

On cue, low growls reach his ears, and he doesn’t have to turn around to know that at least a few of his pack members have arrived and are stalking out from amongst the parked cars.  The hunters all take a few steps back, Gerard chuckling in his creepily wheezy way.

“I always said you’d make a fine hunter if you ever came to your senses, Stiles,” he says, casually producing a dagger and leveling it at Isaac, who’s standing just off Stiles’ right shoulder. “There’s always room for you in our ranks.”

“Pretty sure your daughter wants me dead, actually, so no deal on that,” Stiles says brightly, flashing his too-wide smile.

“I might be willing to make an exception for you,” Kate smirks, letting her eyes travel lewdly up and down his form. “You grew up _ever_ so nicely.”

Stiles is working on a comeback when one of the growls from his left increases several decibels, punctuated by a sharp bark. He spares a glance in that direction – Derek? What the hell?

Kate just laughs and continues to move back toward the opposing row of cars. “Friday night, Stiles! We’ll be at the southernmost point of your pack’s territory at 11 to take the little abominations off your hands.”

“And when we don’t show up?”

Kate smiles wickedly and snaps her fingers. Additional hunters walk two bound figures out of the shadows, and sharp intakes of breath matching his own come from his right and left.

“Gwen,” Stiles breathes, making eye contact with his friend over the piece of cloth tied firmly around her mouth. She’s bleeding from one temple, but her eyes are clear and determined.

“Hannah,” comes from Derek, who’s staring in askance at the woman Stiles can only assume is Gwen’s older sister.

“Natalie,” Isaac says, and his voice is something broken. Stiles glances around, not sure who Isaac is talking about – but no, the hunters only have two hostages – and stops when he follows Isaac’s gaze, locked on to the female hunter holding Hannah by the hair and arm.

“You – you’re _Isaac’s_ Natalie?” Stiles demands. “You’re a _hunter_?”

The girl – because that’s really all she is, can’t be older than eighteen, although Stiles remembers just how deadly Allison was when she was only seventeen – opens her mouth, but yet another hunter (a man roughly Stiles’ own age this time) materializes from between two trucks and laughs before she can speak.

“That’s right, wolfies,” he says, an Irish lilt playing with his voice. “Isaac’s dear sweet Nat is actually one of our finest trainees. Ain’t that the case, darling?” He slips one arm around Natalie’s hip and uses the other to roughly clamp onto her jaw, forcing her head around to face him and kissing her deeply.

Isaac takes half a step forward, and Stiles flings out an arm to stop him.

“That’s enough, Trevor,” Kate says, her voice tinged with exasperation. “Yeah, yeah, Natalie’s one of ours and she’s been tugging on poor Isaac’s heartstrings to get access to your pack. It’s a shame she won’t have time to play him the way I played Derek, but them’s the breaks. Anyway, Stiles, I’m sure you get the idea. Friday, 11pm, southernmost point of your territory, or we start killing innocents – one every hour, starting with your friends here.”

“Hannah’s your friend, too,” Derek spits.

“ _My_ friend?” Kate laughs. “Derek, don’t be an idiot. I _sent_ her here, picked her out especially for you – you always had a thing for tall blondes, didn’t you?”

 

* * *

 

Monday dawns cold and bright.

Stiles wakes up on one of the living room couches, his head cradled in Scott’s lap, one arm thrown over Isaac’s chest. The three of them must have fallen asleep after talking late into the night – well, Stiles and Scott had talked, building up strategies to free Gwen and Hannah only to poke holes in them. Isaac had mostly sat quietly, sadly, betrayed, his heart once again shattered by the hunter girl he could never have.

 

Derek wakes up with a crick in his neck from falling asleep in the chair next to Cora’s bed. She mumbles something about blueberry pancakes in her sleep and he smiles slightly.

 

Bree wakes up to her phone’s alarm, buzzing insistently, demanding that she get up and turn her brain on and prepare for the Linguistics midterm she has in two hours.

 

Tink wakes up to Derek’s creepy uncle standing over her, his eyes blazing red, his claws and fangs extended.  It takes her a second to realize that she’s not in her bed, that she’s not anywhere she recognizes.

“Hello, little Argent,” he growls.

 

Lydia wakes up screaming.

           

           

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Getting there! Adore all of you for your reading and kudos and comments :)


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five days until Kate's deadline.

Cole doesn’t speak for a full twenty-four hours after they find Tink’s lifeless body on the porch. They bring her body inside, and Cole just sits next to it, staring blankly at the ground. He doesn’t eat, he doesn’t sleep, he doesn’t cry.

Cora sits with him.

Derek, for his part, goes into full shift after reading the note Peter left explaining that he’s joining the Alpha pack at Deucalion’s behest, and that Tink is a warning and a taunt to Cora and Derek. He spends an entire day and night as a wolf, letting his human brain bleed away.

It’s raining when he wakes up on Tuesday morning, and he returns to the firehouse. Stiles stops him at the door and hands him a pair of sweatpants.

“You should go back to your apartment,” he says coldly. “You should take Cora with you.”

“Stiles, I…” Derek trails off, vocal cords raw from howling his sorrow. He doesn’t even know what words he would use if he could get his throat to cooperate.

“You can’t be here right now. Isaac doesn’t trust you, Ethan doesn’t trust you, Cole’s a fucking mess.” Stiles rubs his hands over his face. “I put wards up around your place. You’ll be safe for the night. Just take Cora and go. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

 

Cora drives, mostly because Derek’s worried he’s going to claw the steering wheel to pieces. The full moon is only three days away, and control has never been Derek’s strong suit. Now, with Peter’s betrayal and Tink’s tiny, motionless form etched into his brain, he feels the wolf too close to the surface of his skin.

Cora’s quiet for most of the day and into the evening, tiptoeing softly around the apartment, working on her laptop, reading, making pasta when it’s dinnertime and leaving a bowl by Derek’s elbow. Derek somehow has actual work to do – inexplicably, the rest of the world kept right on forging ahead, so his inbox is full of midterm essays from most of his students and excuses about missing the deadline from a few of the lazier ones. He mass prints the papers and loses himself in grading, unable to tell if he’s being too lenient or too strict or too…too… _something_. He must be too _something_ , because he feels seared from the inside out, disconnected.

“You can’t leave me again, okay?”

Derek blinks, looks up from the essay-strewn table. “What?”

“You can’t leave me again,” Cora repeats. She’s standing at the end of the table, twisting the hem of her shirt between her fingers.

Derek takes a second to just look at her. Her eyes are wide and ringed with red that offsets the dark bags beneath them. She’s _skinny_ , maybe too skinny – did she even eat any of the food she made for Derek? Her shoulders are hunched in, her arms folded across her ribs. She smells sad and lonely and anxious. “Why do you think I’m going to leave?”

“It’s what you did after the fire,” she says quietly. “You shifted and you were _gone_ five minutes after the funeral, gone for two straight weeks. I know that you – that you thought it was your fault because of Kate, because of some seriously fucked-up logic, but I’d just lost _everyone_ I loved, and then you disappeared.”

“I’ve apologized for that, Cora,” Derek says. “And I came back.”

She laughs, and the bitterness behind it rings harsh against Derek’s ears. “No you didn’t. You were this pathetic, empty shell of who you used to be – you didn’t _come back_. You left your wolf and your actual humanity in the woods. I told myself that you needed time and space to heal, but for three years, it was just me, robo-Derek, and Peter. And then you _actually fucking left._ You packed up everything in your life that you cared about and moved across the goddamn country, and you left me with Peter – who, by the way, was very clearly losing his fucking mind!”

“That’s not fair. You know I tried to become your legal guardian.”

“Oh, yeah, application denied,” Cora snorts. “And now you’re apparently in the FBI and buddy-buddy with a guy who hacks federal databases in his sleep. Ever think about re-applying?”

Derek sits back in his chair, shocked. No, he hadn’t thought about it. It hadn’t crossed his mind. “I’m so sorry, Cora, I didn’t think --.”

“Save it,” she says, waving a hand dismissively and flipping her hair over one shoulder. “I don’t need you to apologize anymore. God knows I’ve had enough time to think about everything and work through it. But you _cannot_ do that to me again. When you left yesterday, just ran out the door and didn’t come back – do you know how scared I was? Never mind the fact that my heart was breaking for Cole and this little girl who I’d only known for four days but had already somehow managed to worm her way into my heart, I was goddamned terrified that I was never going to see you again. And now you’ve been sitting in that exact position for the past twelve hours like a zombie, and you _can’t leave me again_.”

“Look, Cora, I – oh, hell,” Derek swears, cutting himself off when his phone vibrates. “It’s Scott, I should really get this. Can we talk later?”

Cora flips him off.

Derek sighs and accepts the call. “Scott, this isn’t a great --.”

“Stiles says the boundary around your building’s been tripped,” Scott interrupts, panting like he’s running. “And Danny says the surveillance cams shorted out ten minute ago. “We’re on our way over, but you need to hide or get out of there or something and crap, Lydia’s calling --.”

The call drops, and Cora’s looking at Derek with fear in the set of her jaw and the shake in her fingers. “Well?”

There’s a knock at a door, a pause that spans two heartbeats, and then the door blows inward off its hinges.

“Derek,” Deucalion says, calmly stepping over a piece of the frame that clatters to the ground. “So good to see you again. Cora, we haven’t met, but I’m delighted to make your acquaintance.”

One by one, the members of the Alpha pack file in through the ruined door and take up positions around the perimeter of Derek’s living room. Cassidy, looking supremely disinterested, takes a seat on the kitchen counter. Peter enters last, bloodstains on his shirt.

“Nephew, niece,” Peter smirks. “I take it you received my message?”

“Tink was _fourteen_ ,” Derek says. “She didn’t do _anything_ to you.”

“She was an Argent bitch,” Peter says carelessly. He crosses to the fridge and pokes around in it. “Didn’t I teach you to always keep a nice bottle of wine around in the event of unexpected guests? Besides, the girl needed to die so McCall would kick the two of you out and I could get you here, all to myself.”

“All to yourself?” Derek says with a pointed glance at the six Alphas stationed around the room.

“In a manner of speaking. Ever since you told me about the true existence of the Alpha pack, I knew that this was the path on which I would find my destiny. To kill off the bedraggled remains of my old pack, become more powerful, join a new, unstoppable pack forged in fire and blood – how could I resist?”

“Always with the theatrics,” Derek mutters, wondering in an off-handed sort of way how long it’s going to take one of his neighbors to call the police. The door breaking down was _loud_ , and whatever happens next is sure attract some attention.

“Let’s cut to the chase, gentlemen,” Deucalion says. “The McCall pack is on their way, and I’d prefer to avoid any unnecessary bloodshed. Derek, Cora, you surely see that your chances of survival are nonexistent. Cora’s never been in a true battle in her life, and I’m sure Derek remembers how efficient Rome is at severing arteries. Peter, please proceed.”

Peter swaggers around the table. “Since you’re family, I’ll give you a choice. You can fight, in which case I’ll take pleasure in dragging your deaths out as slowly as possible, or you can concede, and I’ll make it swift. Derek?”

Derek drops into a defensive stance in front of Cora and growls his response. _If my neighbors haven’t called the cops yet,_ that’ll _certainly get their attention._

Peter sighs. “Disappointing. Cora?”

“Uncle Peter?” Derek hears from behind him, and he turns in surprise to see tears rolling down Cora’s cheeks. “You’re really going to kill me?”

A flicker crosses Peter’s face. “There there, dear. I told you it’d be fast. Painless, even. Come here.”

Derek grabs at Cora’s arm as she passes him, but she shrugs out of his grasp and walks, sobbing, into Peter’s arms.

“Good girl, good girl,” Peter sooths, turning Cora in a half-circle so she’s facing Derek. “It’ll all be over soon.” He places the tips of his claws over Cora’s throat. “Now, Derek, because you chose to fight, I’m going to kill Cora in front of you. You’re very good at watching family members die, so this should be nothing new.”

“We need to hurry,” says Felix, peering through the window. “McCall’s pack is almost here.”

“Quite right,” Peter says. “Derek, say goodbye to your sister.”

Blood is pounding through Derek’s veins, his wolf is snarling, and his logic is shifting from human to wolf and back so rapidly that he can barely process the moment Cora whirls on one heel and sinks her claws knuckle-deep into Peter’s stomach. Peter roars and lashes out, catching her across the shoulder, but Derek’s instincts take over and before Cora even hits the ground he’s taken two steps forward, buried his claws back-to-back in Peter’s torso, and is pulling pulling ripping until Peter’s ribcage gives out. Derek has just enough time and rational thought left to realize the red light is fading out of Peter’s eyes before lightning hits every part of his body at once. He’s forced to his knees, probably howling but he honestly doesn’t know, if just _hurts_ but it’s a _good_ hurt, and his wolf is over the fucking moon at this because it only lasts for a few more seconds and then he’s rising to his feet, eyes clear and bright and _red_ , because Derek Hale is an Alpha.

There are six other Alphas in the room, but his beta is wounded. She’s hunched on the ground over her knees, one hand pressed to her shoulder, four long red stripes from the dead former Alpha running the length of her injured arm. He kneels to snuffle at the wound, words still out of reach for his power-saturated wolf brain, but she bats him away weakly. “I’m fine, D, worry about _them_.”

He leaps back to his feet and snarls a challenge at the other Alphas, the Alphas who are on _his_ territory, but not one makes a move to attack. In fact, their leader is smiling.

“Well, that went perfectly, if I do say so myself,” Deucalion says, stopping just short of clapping his hands with glee. “Don’t you agree, Mara?”

“A little anticlimactic,” she shrugs. “But if you’re happy, I’m happy.”

“Happy for now. We’ll see you soon, Derek,” Deucalion says, then leads the others out via the fire escape.

 

* * *

 

Stiles and Scott skid into the apartment moments later, both gasping for air. Scott’s shifted and ready to fight, but draws up short when it becomes apparent that there’s no immediate danger. Stiles leans his bat against the oven and starts speaking in clipped phrases that all run together, trying to put every thought he’s had since pain tore through the piece of his tattoo that was linked to the boundary around Derek’s apartment building into one breath.

“Got here as fast as we could, Scott says he smells a new Alpha, did we beat them here, what the hell happened to your door, and what the – what the _fuck_ happened here?” Stiles finishes on a high note as he rounds the couch and sees Peter’s body still lying on the floor, ribcage cracked open, white ends of bones poking straight up into the air. Cora’s on the couch, cradling an arm that looks like it just about got clawed off, and Derek has backed himself into the far corner of the room, claws and canines out, a constant low rumble emanating from his chest, eyes flashing red and – _whoa, that’s new_.

“Stay back,” Derek growls, throwing a hand out when Scott takes a step forward. “I can’t – it’s too – I can’t control it, I know that you’re _you_ and you’re good and I like you, but all I can think is that you’re another Alpha and I just want to – ugh, I just want to --!”

“I know,” Scott jumps in when Derek’s frustration starts visibly building. He slowly lowers himself to a sitting position and places his hands flat on the floor by his sides, presenting himself as the least-threatening version of another Alpha as possible. “I know, and it’s okay. You’ll be okay. I’m going to help.”

Stiles edges cautiously toward Cora, anxious to check out her wound and help with the healing if he can find any magic to spare. Derek doesn’t seem to mind, so he rushes the last few steps and takes Cora’s elbow gently in his palm, picking scraps of her sleeve out of the cuts and ignoring when she tries to push his hand away. He watches Scott out of the corner of his eye, curious. He’s seen Scott do this – help a brand-spanking-new Alpha get a handle on their power – three times now, and it’s always different: how the new Alpha inherits, the stability of the pack, and the strength of the new Alpha’s anchor seem to be the three biggest factors.

Stiles doesn’t know anything about Derek’s anchor, but he could make an educated guess, and seeing as how it seems Derek got the Alpha right by literally ripping it out of Peter’s chest and his pack is one teenage girl who’s just narrowly avoided a fatal injury? This probably isn’t going to go super well.

“I’ve been where you are,” Scott is saying. “I know what it’s like.”

Stiles can’t help but smirk a little at that. Scott was the de facto leader of the Beacon Hills wolves from the beginning, but his actual status as a Alpha didn’t kick in until, ironically, the Alpha Pack’s first visit, when Scott forced his way through a circle of mountain ash. His pack was stable, his anchor was unshakable, and the divine right or whatever it was that made him a True Alpha made for a relatively smooth transition, but there still were several weeks of Scott accidentally breaking things because he couldn’t control his strength and punishing other pack members for disobeying him (although he did it in ridiculously Scott-ish ways, like the time he full-shifted and sat on Ethan’s back for three hours  when Ethan refused to go pick up the pizza).

“Find your anchor,” Scott says. “It might be a different now, but you should still be able to find it.”

Derek roars, and Stiles feels it vibrate his bones.

“Do you know what Derek’s anchor is?” He asks Cora quietly, aware that Scott is still talking at Derek in the background. Stiles pulls off his flannel shirt and rips it into strips, starting to bind Cora’s skin back together. At least one of her arteries is still draining, and it’s got to be an Alpha wound from the distinct lack of healing going on. “Did Derek do this to you?”

“Not Derek, Peter. Used to be our family. Not sure what it is now.” Cora says, looking paler by the second. Stiles tries to drudge up at ounce of magic to help her, but he’s running the boundary around the firehouse, the ward around the territory, and the full Nemeton dome at their highest settings – not to mention the preservation matrix he’s maintaining over Tink’s body, a cloaking spell Chris had asked for, and a half-dozen or so other things that he can’t remember.  Plus he hasn’t slept in two days and keeps forgetting to eat anything besides coffee and sugar snap peas. He’s plain tapped out at the moment. He’s tapped out, there’s a dead man in a pool of cooling blood less than two feet from him, Derek’s about ready to go on a rampage, Scott is spouting platitudes, Tink is dead, he missed the deadline for turning in his European Mythology midterm and has to take the automatic 10% deduction – Stiles has really had it about to fucking _here_ with this semester.

“LOOK,” Stiles says, shoving himself off the couch and stomping into Derek’s eyeline, praying that this isn’t the last this he’ll ever do. “I get that you’re scared and confused and overwhelmed and having all sorts of feelings that you just don’t know how to deal with because you have the emotional maturity of a fruit fly, and under different circumstances I’d let Scott do the mentor thing and talk you through this at your own pace, but we _do not have time for this shit right now_. Your uncle is dead on the floor of your apartment. _You_ are covered in his blood. Your sister needs to get a hospital. I’m pretty sure I hear sirens. So,” and at this point he’s close enough to Derek to poke him in the chest with a finger, so he accentuates each word with a sharp jab, “Grow. The. Fuck. Up. Get a handle on yourself, go take a shower, and meet me at Stovington General in thirty minutes.”

There is a very, very tense moment when Derek just _stares_ , Stiles stops breathing, and he’s pretty certain he’s about to die. But then Derek blinks, straightens up, nods, and moves around Stiles on his way to the bathroom. The shower starts running a few seconds later.

“Dude,” Scott says, looking impressed. “What was that?”

Stiles shrugs, staring after the newly-minted Alpha. “Fuck if I know. Okay, so. Dead guy. Killer. Hurt girl. Sirens. We going with wild animal attack?”

“Best option, right?” Scott comes around the couch and looks over Cora’s arm, frowning. “Yeah, she definitely needs to go to the hospital.”

“Don’t wan’ the hospital,” Cora says, glaring at them. “Wanna stay with D’rek.”

“He’ll meet us there and help sneak you out once your healing kicks in,” Stiles says, pulling out his phone and sending some rapid-fire text messages: to the pack, to give them a quick update; to Joe Dawson, the non-practicing Druid who happens to be an ER nurse; to Sheila Ritter, who’s in the process of mobilizing her pack and bringing them down the coast to fight beside them and get Gwen back.  “Also, I’d be much more inclined to listen to you if you had the capability of speaking in grammatically correct sentences.”

Her glare intensifies to a threshold that a girl who weighs _maybe_ 100 pounds soaking wet and is half-dead of blood loss really shouldn’t be able to achieve.

“Dunno, man,” Scott calls from where he’s now crouched over Peter’s body. “This does _not_ look like an animal attack. And how are we explaining the door?”

“Ummmm,” Stiles hedges, drawing out the syllable for time. “Wolf came in through the fire escape. Derek was in his room, heard Cora scream, called us. Derek came out and fought it off with…uh…my bat! Derek came out and fought it off with my bat, which I left here after…I don’t know, after a weekend pick-up game. By the time we got here, he’d scared it off, but Peter was already dead and Cora was hurt. We busted down the door because Cora was too freaked out to answer and Derek was in the shower. Voila.”

“Why would Derek call _us_? Why not, like, Animal Control or the police?”

“Because you’re a vet student? Yeah, sure, because you’re a vet student.”

Cora squints at them. “You two are terrible at this.”

“Yeah, well, luckily, we have a pack member on the force,” Stiles says.

           

* * *

 

“I killed my first wolf when I was fifteen,” Chris Argent says, handing Derek a cup of horrible hospital coffee and settling into the uncomfortable chair next to him. It’s almost 4AM, but Stiles bribed one of the floor nurses to let them stay in Cora’s room and stand guard. In a few hours, the modern medicine administered will have Cora back to a place where her healing will take over. She’ll be good as new.  “It was supposed to be a routine patrol of the neighboring pack’s lands with my dad, but we got into trouble and suddenly a werewolf was standing over me, going for my throat. I didn’t have time to think, I just let my training take over. Two shots, and he was dead.”

Derek doesn’t say anything. Derek can’t say anything. Derek is a turbulent mass of emotions he can’t tamp down.

“When I pushed his body off me, I realized that my father had been standing to the side, watching. He would have let the wolf kill me, just to see if I’d prove myself. He patted me on the back afterwards and said he was _proud_. Two days later, I realized that one of the boys in my homeroom had been missing for 48 hours, and when I threw up during training that night, Gerard told me that there was no room for weakness in our line of work.”

Chris sips at his own coffee, wincing at the taste. “I figured out later on that my father set it up that way on purpose, just to drive home the message that any werewolf is a monster that needs to be put down, even the kid from your homeroom who stumbles onto two hunters on pack lands. Gerard wanted my first kill to mean something.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Derek forces out.

“Knowing what I know now, my first kill didn’t deserve it,” Chris says, ripping little pieces of Styrofoam from the rim and letting them snow down between his boots. “And I spent twenty-three years as a hunter in my father’s image after that, until my daughter showed me a better way. Some of those I killed were truly terrible, but a lot weren’t. I have to live with that guilt, with the weight of their unlived lives on my shoulders.”

A team of night nurses roll a gurney past Cora’s room. Chris’ eyes track their movement.

“My father is wrong about a lot of things,” he says when the hallway is clear again. “It’s not weakness to feel remorse. It’s not weakness to wonder if you made the right decision. It’s _human_. It’s what keeps us from becoming like Gerard and Deucalion and Kate and Peter. I’m not going to pretend to know what you’re feeling, Derek, but you should know that in my eyes – and Scott’s, and Isaac’s, and Stiles’ – you made the right decision. Peter deserved to die for what he did to Tink. We would have killed him if you hadn’t.”

“He would have killed Cora,” Derek says, staring down at his hands where he can still feel Peter’s blood.

“I know.”

“I made the right decision?”

Chris’ hand comes down lightly on Derek’s shoulder. “You made the right decision.”

 

* * *

 

On Wednesday night, Derek and Cora move back into the firehouse. Derek’s jumping at every sound and sudden movement, Alpha power giving his already-heightened werewolf senses a considerable boost, but he’s managing. He very nearly loses control when Isaac tells him not to go into Tink’s bedroom because that’s where they’re keeping her until Friday’s service, but he’s managing. Cole shakes his hand and thanks him for killing the bastard that murdered his sister and Derek almost jumps clean out of his skin, but he’s managing. The full moon is so close that Derek’s wolf is basically singing to it, but he’s managing.

He has no idea how the fuck he’s going to deal with the fact that Stiles is apparently his anchor now, but that’s another battle for another day.

So when the doorbell rings around 10pm and Derek’s over the back of the couch, in a full shift, and snarling before anyone else even reacts? It’s not really a surprise.

“Relax,” Scott says pointedly as Bree goes to let them in. “It’s just Lydia and Malia.”

Oh. Right. Derek knew that.

Bree comes back with two women in tow. Lydia, the little redheaded banshee who’d predicted Derek’s death a month ago – _wait, hell, has it really only been four weeks?_ \- says hello to everyone, kisses Stiles on the cheek, and immediately heads upstairs to one of the guest rooms, leaving the other long-distance pack member standing semi-awkwardly in the entryway.

“Hey, I’m Malia,” she says, jerking her hand in a little wave. “Sorry about Lyds, she’s had a massive migraine for the past week.”

Derek squints at her. There’s something in his brain that wants to recognize her, trying to piece together bits of information and old memories.

“Derek, what’s wrong with you?” Stiles snaps when Derek’s been staring too long.

“You – she – you’re Peter’s daughter,” Derek stutters. “Cora, doesn’t she look just like the pictures?”

Cora steps up beside Derek and gives Malia a once-over, tilting her head to the side. “Maybe? The last picture we saw was from when she was nine.”

“I was nine when the accident happened,” Malia says slowly, looking back and forth between Derek and Cora and Stiles and Scott. “Isn’t Peter…?”

“The psychopathic uncle Derek killed yesterday?” Isaac completes from the couch. “Yes.”

Derek digs through his pocket for his phone. “We never knew who the mother was, Peter wouldn’t tell us,” he says, swiping through pictures. “We just knew that he got someone pregnant, the child was given up for adoption, and the mother sent him a picture every year until the girl turned nine. Then the pictures stopped.” He offers the phone to Malia, and her eyes widen.

“That’s my ninth birthday,” she says softly, tracing her finger down the screen. “My dad still has this picture up on the wall.”

“Un-fucking-believable,” Stiles groans, scrubbing his hands across his face. “We finally find one of Malia’s biological parents, and he’s the bastard that killed Tink.”

Malia thrusts the phone back at Derek. “You killed him, right?”

Cole lets out a strangled sort of sob, and Derek growls, “With extreme prejudice.”

“Good,” Malia says firmly.

“You okay?” Stiles asks Malia, linking his fingers through hers, and _whoa_ , Derek’s wolf does not like that. Derek’s wolf does not like that at _all_.

“I didn’t know him,” Malia shrugs. “All I know is that he killed Tink, and I’m glad he’s dead.”

“We may never find your mom now, though,” Stiles cautions.

“That might not necessarily be true,” Cora says, tapping one of her fingers against her cheek. “Just because Peter never told us who she was doesn’t mean that he never told anyone else. He had friends, back before the fire – well, not friends, but people who owed him favors and silence. Now that he’s gone, someone might be willing to talk to us.”

“Really?” Malia asks, her entire face brightening in excitement.

Derek can barely think. His wolf is flooding him with emotions – displeasure at the obvious closeness of Stiles to another werecreature, joy at finding another person he’s related to, the continued dull ache left in his heart by Tink, constant low-level worry for Hannah’s safety, the pounding realization that his life has gotten totally, totally out of control. “Worth a try.”

 

* * *

 

The Ritter pack arrives on Thursday, bringing the firehouse to capacity, and Derek, after doing the obligatory meet-and-greet, locks himself in his room and does breathing exercises to avoid shredding out of his skin. Stiles lets himself in around midnight, collapsing into the chair next to Derek’s bed with a sigh.

“Finally finished your European Myth midterm?”

“Yup,” Stiles groans. “Fifteen pages with footnotes in nine hours.”

“Is it worth reading?”

“If you’re interested in how Rome’s mythological system foreshadowed the fall of the empire and can be traced through Star Wars’ sins of the father, hero/anti-hero, and ‘it came from outer space’ tropes, yeah, sure.”

Derek chuckles. “I’m _really_ glad I’m not one of your professors.”

“You and me both. It would probably make the fact that I’m your anchor a little awkward.”

Derek sits up so fast that he actually gets a little dizzy, his book falling to his lap. “What?”

“Let’s skip the part where you deny it,” Stiles says, a yawn wracking his entire body and letting spirals of his tattoo peek out where his shirt inches up. “It’s painfully obvious. You almost bit Sheila’s head off when she hugged me earlier.”

“I…I…” Derek tries, but gives up almost immediately. He doesn’t have the words or the energy to lie. “Yeah. Sorry if that’s weird for you.”

Stiles’ smile glows bright even in the dimly lit room. “Dude. My five closest friends on the planet are a werewolf, a werewolf hunter, a banshee, a half-Fae girl, and an ogre named Stan who wants to be a lawyer. Once a month, my roommates sprout tails and run around in the forest; I drive north and commune with a magical tree. ‘Weird’ fits pretty squarely into my wheelhouse.”

“Fair point.”

They sit in silence for a moment. Derek goes back to reading, and he’s pretty sure Stiles has fallen asleep until he suddenly says, “Sorry, I think I phrased that wrong. Yeah, ‘weird’ is in my wheelhouse. I’m all about weird. But it’s not weird to me – being your anchor.”

“Oh,” Derek says, his heart starting a beat a staccato against his ribcage. “Okay. That’s good, then.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s good.”

“I hate being an Alpha,” Derek blurts.

Stiles stares at him. “I beg your pardon?”

“I hate it,” Derek repeats. “I mean, my wolf loves it, but I _hate_ it. Everything feels overwhelming and I keep reacting to things like a lunatic.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Stiles says easily. “I’ve seen it before. It takes time to settle into the groove.”

“What if I don’t want to settle in?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…” Derek lets all of his breath _whoosh_ out of his lungs. “It’s not just the initial getting-used-to-it phase that I don’t like. I don’t want to be an Alpha, Stiles. I was never supposed to be one, and I never _wanted_ to be one. I don’t like being in charge, I’m shit at negotiating treaties and territories, I don’t want to be anyone’s role model. I’m a pretty kick-ass beta, and I _like_ being a beta. So what if I don’t want to settle into this groove? Plus I think me killing Peter is what Deucalion wanted somehow, he said that things had ‘worked out perfectly’ right before they left, and --.”

Before Derek can come up with something else idiotic to say, Stiles’ lips press into his.

As first kisses go, this is far from perfect. They’re in a house full to the brim with super-hearing werewolves; Stiles’ hand is cold where it’s gripping his shoulder; Derek’s too surprised to react for a second and then surges forward, knocking their teeth together.

But it’s _Stiles_ , so it’s right and wonderful and Derek wouldn’t change a damn thing.

Stiles pulls away too soon, and Derek feels like he’s deflating. “Just wanted to make sure we got to do that once,” Stiles whispers, his fingers still knotted in Derek’s shirt. “Since we’re, you know, going to war tomorrow night.”

 

* * *

 

They hold Tink’s service at sundown on Friday, in a clearing just behind the firehouse. The Ritter pack is respectfully keeping their distance at Stiles’ request, so it’s just the twelve of them, standing in a little circle. They’ll have a full funeral in a few days, let all of Tink’s friends from school know, go through all the necessary channels, but this – this is just for them.

Derek’s helped a lot with this, incorporating ancient werewolf funeral traditions, walking them through the words and the rituals meant to help Tink’s wolf find a peaceful resting place. A lot of it falls to Stiles as the Emissary, so he lights the herbs and chants  and sets the rings of wolfsbane into the earth. Stiles is the only one who doesn’t cry – but then, Stiles hasn’t cried in a long, long time.

At the very end, everyone is given the chance to place something in the grave and say the final words. They reverse rank for this, so it starts with the Hales, since they’re not truly pack. Cora offers a handful of late-autumn flowers, and when she says “We move forward with the marks from those we’ve loved inscribed on our souls,” her voice breaks, and Stiles knows she’s remembering her own family’s funeral.

Derek drops in a handful of something that clatter on the way down – Peter’s claws. “He paid for what he did,” Derek says firmly. “We move forward with the marks from those we’ve loved inscribed on our souls.”

Cole barely manages to get the words out between sobs, but lays Tink’s baby blanket – one of the only things she’d brought with her when they fled – at her feet. Bree contributes Tink’s beat-up soccer ball and takes Cole’s hand. Ethan offers a bag of peanut butter cookies; Danny brings the badge he made for Tink that declares her a member of MI6; Malia pours out a shot of whiskey because, in her words, Tink never got the chance.

Chris steps forward and pulls something small from his pocket. “When a hunter dies before her training is complete, we make a silver bullet on her behalf,” he says. He opens his palm and the waning light reflects off the silver in his hand. “Tiffany Rebecca Argent, your training is complete. _Nous protégeons ceux qui ne peuvent pas se protéger, dans cette vie et la prochaine._ ”

Lydia produces a long-sleeved white shirt with a dreamcatcher graphic on the front. “It was Allison’s,” she whispers after saying the words, gently letting it fall from her hands. “She’s going to love you. Say hi for me. And give Erica hell.”

Isaac very, very carefully places a folded piece of paper beside Tink’s head. He whispers the words like a prayer.

Stiles ranks above Scott for this, so the Alpha steps up and, according to tradition, slices into the skin of his forearm with opposite claws and lets his blood drip until the cuts heal. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you,” Stiles hears him whisper.

Finally his turn, Stiles still isn’t crying – but his breaths are shallow, and his vision is tunneling. “I didn’t bring something to put in your grave, Tink. But I can do something for you now that I couldn’t while you were alive.” He stretches his hands out and carefully chips away at the barrier in his head until he can access what he needs. Everyone startles a little as the ground beneath them shifts slightly. Stiles drops his hands a few seconds later and peers into the earth, smiling sadly when he catches a shimmer near Tink’s elbow. “Protection. No can hurt you now. We move forward with the marks from those we’ve loved inscribed on our hearts.”

They are silent for a long while. They sit and they cry, some hold hands, some hold each other.

It’s full dark by the time they start heading back to the house, moving as a group by unspoken assent. They’re just stepping into the backyard when a flash of fire shoots across Stiles’ left ribs; he shouts against the sudden pain and goes down hard on one knee, immediately flipping to his back and scrabbling at his shirt while fending off worried pack members.

“Shut up, shut up, I’m fine, let go,” he says, tugging the hem of his shirt up almost to his armpits and twisting around to see which line has broken. “Freaking – Scott, someone just hit the territory ward. Not wolf, feels human – it’s got to be the hunters.”

“Damnit,” Scott says under his breath. “Is the Stop-All for the house ready?”

“No,” Stiles says, jumping to his feet. “I can’t power it by myself right now, and even if I could, the Ritter pack’s out along the eastern line. I can’t lock them out.”

“Ah, crap, good point,” Scott says. He half-shifts, throws back his head, and howls. Way off behind the house, a response echoes back. “They’re on their way. So, we get ready to fight?”

“It’s too early,” Stiles laments, looking at his watch. “It’s only 8:30. Kate said the showdown’s at 11, so I told Rasho, June, Roderick, and Makfa that they didn’t need to be here until 10.”

“There were only nine of them as of yesterday,” Chris says, rolling out his neck and cracking his back. “Twelve of us, more when the Ritters get here. We can take them.”

“Unnecessary risk for you two,” Isaac says, starting to usher Bree and Cole back into the firehouse. “Try again when you can legally buy beer. Danny, Lyds, you too.” 

“Stiles is only twenty!” Bree says, ducking under Isaac’s arm and darting back to the group.

“Stiles makes rings of mountain ash fall out of the sky,” Stiles says mildly. “Magic trumps the ability to purchase alcohol.”

Ethan shoots Stiles a sideways look. “In what universe is _that_ true?”

“In what universe is there a recognized exchange rate between magic and alcohol?” Danny adds. “Token human is staying, by the way. Token human is allowed to fight when we’re only fighting other humans.”

“And don’t you even _think_ about trying to keep me out of this, Lahey,” Lydia says, shucking off her heels and commandeering one of the pairs of rainboots that are somehow perpetually piled by the deck’s door. “Malia’s been training me. Stiles, do you have an extra bat?”

“My main one’s still in Evidence at the police station, but I think there’s a spare in the garage,” Stiles says, ignoring how cute the Hales look as they try follow the brisk back-and-forth of the pack.

A sharp _crack_ occurs in the woods, and everyone spins to face it. Stiles is expecting a lot of things – arrows and bullets to start flying fast and thick, mainly, so he tosses up a barrier spell that acts like four-foot-thick, invisible molasses – but a single teenage girl stumbling out of the trees, bloodied and beaten, is not on the list.

“Natalie?” Isaac says incredulously, rushing forward.

“Isaac, stop!” Chris says. “Could be a trap!”

“She’s not a trap, she’s in trouble,” Isaac says angrily, pushing past him. Stiles carefully lets Isaac pass through the barrier and seals it up again, ready to pull him back the second something goes wrong.

“So I know this is awful timing,” the girl says as she and Isaac reach one another. “But do you remember saying that you’d help if someone was hurting me?”

“Oh, Natalie,” Isaac sighs. “Who?”

“Trevor,” she says. “The boyfriend. _Ex_ -boyfriend. How cliché of me, huh? But that’s not really why I’m here.”

She limps a few steps closer to the pack, and her injuries get thrown into sharp relief by one of the deck lights – it looks like someone took a meat tenderizer to her face, and from the way she’s holding her right arm, it might be dislocated.

“Alpha McCall,” she says when she’s close enough not to shout. “My name is Natalie Lorde. I’m an Argent by my grandmother’s bloodline.”

What do you want?” Scott asks. It’s a little blunt but hey – who can blame him?

“Sanctuary from my family, and a place to fight by your side if you’ll have me.” She sways a little where she stands, and Isaac steadies her by the elbow. If Stiles had to guess, he’d bet on black lines leeching their way up Isaac’s arm right about now.

“Any proof that what you’re saying is true?”

“Besides the black eyes?” Her laugh is so far from humor that chills run down Stiles’ spine. “Information, if you want it. Two pieces.”

“We won’t know if anything she says is true,” Lydia hisses. “It could all just be misdirection.”

“Believe me, don’t believe me – you’ll find out in two hours anyway,” Natalie says. “Kate’s backup arrived today. Eleven more hunters, all experienced, all brainwashed.”

“That’s twenty total,” Chris says, running a hand through his hair. “ _Fuck_.”

“Nineteen if you don’t count her,” Isaac corrects, jerking his head toward Natalie.

“You said you have two pieces of information,” Stiles says. “What’s the other?”

Natalie shifts Isaac’s fingers from her elbow to her hand and squeezes. “Gerard and Deucalion are working together.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I adore all of you for your kudos and comments and general love. Quick housekeeping note that I dropped the chapter count from 11 to 10 because I merged two semi-shorties into this mammoth - so only one installment left!
> 
> Also, I cried while writing this. A few times. That's healthy, right? Right.


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